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Genius in Sunshine and Shadow

by Maturin M. Ballou · English · Gutenberg #40758 · 504,482 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Genius in Sunshine and Shadow

Author: Maturin M. Ballou


        
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GENIUS IN SUNSHINE AND SHADOW ***

    GENIUS

    IN

    SUNSHINE AND SHADOW.




By the Same Author

EDGE-TOOLS OF SPEECH.

One fine octavo volume. $3.50.

"A vast storehouse of the best thought of the world."--_Boston: Home
Journal._

"Will find its way into thousands of families. It is a volume to take up
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"'Edge-Tools of Speech' is one of the best books of quotation in the
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office."--_Gazette._

"He has classified his quotations alphabetically under the head of subjects
('Ability,' 'Absence,' etc.), and has collected the most famous literary or
historical sayings bearing on each subject. Thus the word 'Ability' is made
the text of wise utterances from Napoleon I., Dr. Johnson, Wendell
Phillips, Longfellow, Maclaren, Gail Hamilton, Froude, Beaconsfield,
Zoroaster, Schopenhauer, La Rochefoucauld, Matthew Wren, Gibbon, and
Aristotle. It has no rival."--_Christian Union._

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"To open it at random anywhere is to chance upon the wisdom of the ages.
Every important authority of every age and clime is represented. The
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    TICKNOR AND COMPANY, BOSTON.




    GENIUS

    IN SUNSHINE AND SHADOW

    BY

    MATURIN M. BALLOU
    AUTHOR OF "EDGE-TOOLS OF SPEECH," ETC.

      'Tis in books the chief
    Of all perfection to be plain and brief.
                                    BUTLER

    BOSTON
    TICKNOR AND COMPANY
    1887

    _Copyright, 1886_,
    BY MATURIN M. BALLOU.

    _All rights reserved._

    University Press:
    JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE.




PREFACE.


The volume in hand might perhaps better have been entitled "Library
Notes," as the pages are literally the gathered notes of the author's
library-hours. The reader will kindly peruse these pages remembering
that they assume only to be the gossip, as it were, of the author with
himself,--notes which have grown to these proportions by casual
accumulation in the course of other studies, and without consecutive
purpose. That these notes thus made have been put into printed form, is
owing to the publisher's chance knowledge and hearty approval of them.
These few lines are by way, not of apology,--no sensible person ever
made an apology, according to Mr. Emerson,--but of introduction; so that
the reader may not fancy he is to encounter a labored essay upon the
theme suggested by the title of the volume.

These pages may not be without a certain wholesome influence, if,
fortunately, they shall incite others to analyze the character of genius
as exhibited by the masters of art and literature. The facts alluded
to, though familiar to many, are not so to all; wherefore the volume
may indirectly promote the knowledge of both history and biography, at
the same time leading the thoughtful reader to seek further and more
ample information concerning those individuals who are here so briefly
introduced.

M. M. B.




GENIUS

IN SUNSHINE AND SHADOW.




CHAPTER I.


The ever-flowing tide of time rapidly obliterates the footprints of
those whom the world has delighted to honor. While it has caused heroic
names, like their possessors, to lapse into oblivion, it has also
shrouded many a historical page with the softened veil of distance, like
ivy-grown towers, rendering what was once terrible now only picturesque.
In glancing back through thousands of years, and permitting the mind to
rest on the earliest recorded epochs, one is apt to forget how much
human life then, in all its fundamental characteristics, was like our
own daily experience. There never was a golden age; that is yet to come.
The most assiduous antiquarian has only corroborated the fact that human
nature is unchanged. Conventionalities, manners and customs, the
fashions, may change, but human nature does not. As an example of the
mutability of fame, we have only to ask ourselves what is actually
known to-day of Homer,[1] Aristophanes, and their renowned
contemporaries, or even of our more familiar Shakespeare?[2] Of the
existence of the first named we have evidence in his two great epics,
the Iliad and the Odyssey; but, though deemed the most famous poet that
ever lived, we do not even know his birthplace.

    "Ten ancient towns contend for Homer dead,
    Through which the living Homer begged his bread."

The cautious historian only tells us that he is supposed to have
flourished about nine hundred years before the time of Christ; while
there are also learned writers who contend that no such person as
Homer[3] ever lived, and who attribute the two most famous poems of
antiquity to various minstrels or ballad-mongers, who celebrated the
"tale of Troy divine" at various periods, and whose songs and legends
were fused into unity at the time of Pisistratus.

Over the personality of Aristophanes,[4] the great comic poet of
Greece, who is supposed to have flourished some five or six hundred
years later than Homer, there rests the same cloud of obscurity, and he
is clearly identified only by eleven authentic comedies which are still
extant, though he is believed to have written fifty. Of Shakespeare,
born some two thousand years later (1564), how little is actually known
beyond the fact of his birthplace! Even the authorship of his plays,
like that of Homer's poems, is a subject of dispute. Perhaps, however,
this loss of individuality but adds to the influence of the poet's
divine mission. The really great men of history, benefactors of their
race, are those who still live in the undying thoughts which they have
left behind them.

       *       *       *       *       *

In this familiar gossip we propose to glance briefly at such names as
may suggest themselves, without observing any strict system of
classification. The theme is so fruitful, the pages of history so teem
with portraits which stand forth in groups to attract the eye, that one
hardly knows where to begin, what matter to exclude, what to adduce; and
therefore, closing the elaborate records of the past, we will trust to
momentary inspiration and the ready promptings of memory.

The first thought which strikes us in this connection is, that the
origin of those whom the world has called great--men who have written
their names indelibly upon the pages of history--is often of the
humblest character. Such men have most frequently risen from the ranks.
In fact, genius ignores all social barriers and springs forth wherever
heaven has dropped the seed. The grandest characters known in art,
literature, and the useful inventions have illustrated the axiom that
"brave deeds are the ancestors of brave men;" and it would almost appear
that an element of hardship is necessary to the effective development of
true genius. Indeed, when we come to the highest achievements of the
greatest minds, it seems that they were not limited by race, condition
of life, or the circumstances of their age. "It is," says Emerson, "the
nature of poetry to spring, like the rainbow daughter of Wonder, from
the Invisible, to abolish the past and refuse all history." But this of
course refers only to poetry in its loftiest and noblest conceptions and
sentiments; and then only in passages of a great work.

Æsop, the fabulist, who flourished six hundred years before Christ, and
whose fables are as familiar to us after the lapse of twenty-five
hundred years as household words; Publius Syrus,[5] the eminent
moralist, who lived in the time of Julius Cæsar, and whose wise axioms
are to be found in every library; Terence,[6] the Carthaginian poet and
dramatist; Epictetus, the stoic philosopher,--all were slaves in early
life,[7] but won freedom and lasting fame by force of their native
genius. No man is nobler than another unless he is born with better
abilities, a more amiable disposition, and a larger heart and brain. The
field is open to all; for it is fixedness of purpose and perseverance
that win the prizes of this world,--qualities that can be exercised by
the most humble.

Protagoras, the Greek sophist and orator, was in his youth a street
porter of Athens, carrying loads upon his back like a beast of burden.
He was a singularly independent genius, and was expelled from his native
city because he openly doubted the existence of the gods. His
countryman, Cleanthes the stoic, was also "a hewer of stone and drawer
of water," but rose among the Athenians to be esteemed as a rival of the
great philosopher Zeno. He wrote many works in his day,--about three
hundred years before the Christian Era,--none of which have been
preserved except a hymn to Jupiter, which is remarkable for purity of
thought and elevation of sentiment.

We need not confine ourselves, however, to so remote a period to
illustrate that genius is independent of circumstances. In our random
treatment of the subject there occurs to us the name of Bandoccin, one
of the most learned men of the sixteenth century, who was the son of an
itinerant shoemaker, and who was himself brought up to the trade. Gelli,
the prolific Italian author, and president of the Florentine Academy,
was a tailor by trade, and of very humble birth. His moral dialogues
entitled, _I Capricci del Bottajo_ ("The Whims of the Cooper"), have
been pronounced by competent critics to be extraordinary for originality
and piquancy, while all his works are remarkable for purity of diction.
Canova, the sculptor of world-wide fame, was the son of a day-laborer in
the marble quarries. Opie, the distinguished English painter, earned his
bread at the carpenter's trade until his majority, but before his death
became professor of painting in the Royal Academy. Amyot, the brilliant
scholar, and professor of Greek, Hebrew, and Latin, who is ranked among
those who have contributed most towards the perfection of the French
language, learned to write upon birch-bark with charcoal, while he lived
on a loaf of bread per day. This man rose to be grand almoner of France,
and proved that courage, perseverance, and genius need no ancestors.[8]

Akenside, the English didactic poet, wit, essayist, and physician,
author of the "Pleasures of the Imagination," was a butcher's boy. His
developed genius caused him to be appointed to the Queen's household.
Sir Humphry Davy was an apothecary's apprentice in his youth. Matthew
Prior, the English poet and diplomatist, began life as a charity
scholar. Rollin, famous for his "Ancient History," was the son of a poor
Parisian cutler, and began life at an iron-forge. James Barry, the
eminent historical painter, was in his minority a foremast hand on board
an Irish coasting-vessel. D'Alembert, the remarkable French
mathematician, author, and academician, was at birth a poor foundling in
the streets of Paris, though it must be added that he was the
illegitimate and discarded son of Madame de Tencin, one of the
wickedest, most profligate, most cynical, and ablest of the high-placed
women of France. D'Alembert scorned her[9] proffered help when she,
learning that he was the offspring of one of her desultory amours,
attempted to assist him by her money and patronage. He lived austerely
poor, and his love was lavished, not on his natural, or rather
unnatural, mother, but on the indigent woman who had picked him up in
the street, and who by self-denial had enabled him to obtain sustenance
and education. As soon as he was old enough to realize his true
situation, he said, "I have no name, but with God's help I will make
one!" The time came when Catherine II. of Russia offered him one hundred
thousand francs per annum to become the educator of her son, which he
declined.

Béranger, the lyric poet of France, whose effectiveness and purity of
style defy criticism, was at one time a barefooted orphan on the
boulevards of the great city. His verses, bold, patriotic, and
satirical, were in every mouth among the masses of his countrymen,
contributing more than any other cause to produce the revolution of
1830.[10] He had the noble independence to refuse all official
recognition under government. Rachel, it will be remembered, was in her
childhood a street-ballad singer. A resident of the French capital once
pointed out to the writer a spot on the Champs Élysées where at the age
of twelve, so pale as to seem scarcely more than a shadow, she used to
appear daily, accompanied by her brother. A rude cloth was spread on the
ground, upon which she stood and recited tragic scenes from Corneille
and Racine, or sang patriotic songs for pennies, accompanied upon the
violin by her brother.

Her attitudes, gestures, and voice always captivated a crowd of people.
Rachel was a Jewish pedler's daughter, though she was born in
Switzerland; and in these youthful days she wore a Swiss costume upon
the boulevards.[11]

Boccaccio, the most famous of Italian novelists, was the illegitimate
son of a Florentine tradesman, and began life as a merchant's clerk. It
is well known that Shakespeare borrowed the plot of "All's Well that
Ends Well" from Boccaccio.[12] In fact, the "Decamerone" furnished him
with plots for several of his plays. Chaucer derived from the same
source his poem of the "Knight's Tale." We never hear shallow people
reflecting upon the Bard of Avon for taking some of his plots from
earlier writers, and weaving about them the golden threads of his superb
genius, without recalling Dryden's remark relative to Ben Jonson's
adaptations and translations from the classics, in such plays as
"Catiline" and "Sejanus." "He invades authors," says Dryden, "like a
monarch; and what would be theft in other writers is but victory in
him." Sterne's idea upon the same subject also suggests itself. "As
monarchs have a right," he says, "to call in the specie of a State and
raise its value by their own impression, so are there certain
prerogative geniuses who are above plagiaries, who cannot be said to
steal, but from their improvement of a thought, rather to borrow it, and
repay the commonwealth of letters with interest again, and may more
properly be said to adopt than to kidnap a sentiment, by leaving it heir
to their own fame."

Columbus, who gave a new world to the old, was a weaver's son, and in
his youth he earned his bread as a cabin-boy in a coasting-vessel which
sailed from Genoa. The story of the great Genoese pilot possesses a more
thrilling interest than any narrative which the imagination of poet or
romancer has ever conceived. His name flashes a bright ray over the
mental darkness of the period in which he lived. In imagination one sees
him wandering for years from court to court, begging the necessary means
wherewith to prosecute his inspired purpose,[13] and finally, after
successfully accomplishing his mission, languishing in chains and in
prison.

How naturally Halleck's invocation to Death, in "Marco Bozarris," occurs
to us here, as the hero, when his object has been attained, joyfully
faces the grim monarch:

    "Thy grasp is welcome as the hand
    Of brother in a foreign land;
    Thy summons welcome as the cry
    That told the Indian isles were nigh,
    To the world-seeking Genoese,
    When the land wind from woods of palm
    And orange-groves and fields of balm
    Blew o'er the Haytian seas."

De Foe, the author of "Robinson Crusoe," and of over two hundred other
books, was a hosier by trade, the son of a London butcher named James
Foe. The particle _De_ was added by the son without other authority than
the suggestion of his own fancy. Cardinal Wolsey and Kirke White were
also sons of butchers.

Claude Lorraine, the glorious colorist, whose very name has become a
synonym in art, was in youth employed as a pastry-cook. Molière, the
great French dramatist and actor, who presents one of the most
remarkable instances of literary success known to history, was the son
of a tapestry-maker, and was himself at one time apprenticed to a
tailor, and afterwards became a _valet-de-chambre_. When Molière was
valet to Louis XIII., he had already appeared upon the stage, and was
rather sneered at by the other members of the king's household. The
generous monarch observed this, and determined to put a stop to it: "I
am told you have short commons here, Molière, and some of my people
decline to serve you," said Louis, as he rose from his breakfast one
day. "Sit down here at my table. I warrant you are hungry." And the king
cut him a portion of chicken and put it upon his plate just at the
moment when a distinguished member of the royal household entered. "You
see me," said the king, "giving Molière his breakfast, as some of my
people do not think him good enough company for themselves." From that
hour the royal valet was treated with due consideration. William
Cobbett, the English author and vigorous political writer, was a poor
farmer's boy and entirely self-educated. Izaak Walton, the delightful
biographist and miscellaneous author, whose "Complete Angler" would make
any man's name justly famous, was for years a linen-draper in London.
Pope and Southey were the sons of linen-drapers.

How rapidly instances of the triumphs of genius over circumstances
multiply upon us when the mind is permitted to roam at will through the
long vista of the past! Cervantes, the Spanish Shakespeare, whose "Don
Quixote" is as much a classic[14] as "Hamlet," was a common foot-soldier
in the army of Castile. In 1575 he was captured by an Algerine corsair
and carried as a slave to Algiers, where he endured the most terrible
sufferings. He was finally ransomed and returned to Spain. Alexandre
Dumas's grandmother was an African slave. Hugh Miller, author, editor,
poet, distinguished naturalist, whose clear, choice Saxon-English caused
the Edinburgh "Review" to ask, "Where could this man have acquired his
style?" was a stone-mason, and his only college was a stone-quarry.[15]

Keats, the sweetest of English poets, whose delicacy of fancy and beauty
of versification are "a joy forever," was born in a stable. Oliver
Cromwell, one of the most extraordinary men in English history, famous
as a citizen, great as a general, and greatest as a ruler, was the son
of a malt-brewer. Howard, the philanthropist and author, whose name
stands a monument of Christian fame, was at first a grocer's boy.
Rossini, one of the greatest of modern composers, was the son of an
itinerant musician and a strolling actress. Andrea del Sarto was the son
of a tailor, and took his name from his father's trade. Perino del Vaga
was born in poverty and nearly starved in his boyhood. Perugino, whose
noble painting of the "Infant Christ and the Virgin" adorns the Albani
Palace at Rome, grew up in want and misery. We all remember the story of
the shepherd-boy Giotto, who finally came to be so eminent a painter,
and the intimate friend of Dante; like Michael Angelo, he was an
architect and sculptor. Paganini, one of the greatest of instrumental
performers that ever lived, was born in poverty and was illegitimate. He
gained enormous sums of money by his wonderful exhibitions and musical
compositions, but was spoiled by adulation, becoming reckless and
dissipated. His performances in the cities of Europe created a _furore_
before unparalleled in the history of music, and never since surpassed.

Wilson the unequalled ornithologist, Dr. Livingstone the heroic
missionary and African traveller, and Tannahill[16] the Scottish
poet,--author of that familiar and favorite song, "Jessie, the Flower of
Dumblane,"--earned their living in youth as journeymen weavers. Joost
van den Vondel, the national poet of Holland, was a hosier's apprentice.
Molière, already referred to, began his career as a journeyman tailor,
but occasionally his maternal grandfather took him to the play, and thus
were sown the seeds which led to his greatness as a dramatic author and
actor. Samuel Woodworth, author of the "Old Oaken Bucket," one of the
sweetest lyrics in our language, was a journeyman printer. Richard
Cobden, statesman, economist, and author, was a poor Sussex farmer's
son, whose youthful occupation was that of tending sheep. John Bright,
the intimate friend and coadjutor of Cobden, one of the greatest, most
eloquent, and most successful of English reformers, was the son of a
cotton-spinner. Lord Clyde, the successful general who crushed the
rebellion in India, and who was made a peer of England, was the son of a
carpenter. The motto of his life, always inscribed upon the fly-leaf of
his pocket memorandum-book, was: "By means of patience, common-sense,
and time, impossibilities become possible."

John Bunyan,[17] the author of "Pilgrim's Progress," the solace
and delight of millions, and a text-book for all future time, was a
tinker. His great work is said to have obtained a larger circulation
than any other English book except the translation of the Bible.
Benjamin Franklin, statesman, philosopher, epigrammatist, was a
tallow-chandler.[18] Nathaniel Bowditch, the eminent mathematician, was
a cooper's apprentice. He was twenty-one years of age before he may be
said to have begun his education, but in his prime was a Fellow of the
Royal Society of London, and was offered the chair of mathematics in
Harvard College. Hiram Powers, the first sculptor from this country to
win European fame, was brought up a ploughboy on a Vermont farm; his
"Greek Slave" gave him high rank among modern sculptors. Elihu Burritt,
the remarkable linguist, was a Connecticut horse-shoer. Whitefield, the
eloquent English preacher and father of the sect of Calvinistic
Methodists, was in youth the stable-boy of an English inn. Cardinal
Wolsey, chief minister of Henry VIII., was brought up to follow his
father's humble calling of a butcher. Horne Tooke, the English wit,
priest, lawyer, and genius, was the son of a poulterer.[19] Correra,
afterwards president of Guatemala, was born in poverty, and for years
was a drummer-boy in the army, where he was laughed at for saying that
the world should some day hear from him, being reminded that his present
business was to make a noise in the world. But he meant what he said,
and acted under Lord Clyde's motto. He rose by degrees to the highest
position in the gift of his countrymen. "To the persevering mortal the
blessed immortals are swift," says Zoroaster.

Ebenezer Elliott, the English "Corn-Law Rhymer,"[20] was a blacksmith,
but a poet by nature, and his songs created a political revolution in
his native land, though unlike Béranger's, in France, it was a peaceful
revolution. He was ever a true champion of the poor and oppressed. In
the latter portion of his life he was in easy pecuniary circumstances.
William Lloyd Garrison,[21] the beloved philanthropist, orator, and
writer, was born in poverty, and was early apprenticed to a shoemaker,
but became a journeyman printer before his majority. He suffered
imprisonment for his opinions' sake, and may be said to have been the
father of Abolitionism in America, fortunately living long enough to see
the grand effort of his life crowned with success, in the emancipation
of the blacks and the abolishment of slavery throughout the length and
breadth of his native land. Kepler, the famous German astronomer, was
the son of a poor innkeeper, and though enjoying royal patronage, often
felt the pressure of poverty. Coleridge said: "Galileo was a great
genius and so was Newton; but it would take two or three Galileos and
Newtons to make one Kepler." We owe our knowledge of the laws of the
planetary system to him.

Sir Richard Arkwright, inventor of the spinning-jenny, and founder of
the great cotton industries of England, never saw the inside of a
schoolhouse until after he was twenty years of age, having long served
as a barber's assistant. Justice Tenterden, and Turner, greatest among
landscape-painters, were also brought up to the same trade. James
Brindley, the English engineer and mechanician, and Cook, the famed
navigator, were day-laborers in early life. Romney, the artist, John
Hunter, the physiologist, Professor Lee, the Orientalist, and John
Gibson, the sculptor, were carpenters by trade. Shakespeare was a
wool-comber in his youth. These low estates, the workshop and the mine,
have often contributed liberally to recruit the ranks of those whom the
world has recognized as men of genius.

Horace Mann declared that education is our only political safety. He
might have gone further, and said our only moral safety also. It is not,
however, the school and the college alone that bring about this grand
object, though they are natural adjuncts. Real education is the
apprenticeship of life, and that is always the best which we realize in
our struggle to obtain a livelihood. Genius, as a rule, owes little to
scholastic training,--within these pages there will be found proof
sufficient of this. Sir T. F. Buxton says he owed more to his father's
gamekeeper, who could neither read nor write, than to any other source
of knowledge. He said this man was truly his "guide, philosopher, and
friend," whose memory was stored with more varied rustic knowledge, good
sense, and mother wit, than his young master ever met with afterwards.
He adds that he was his first instructor, and that he profited far more
by his remarks and admonitions than by those of his more learned
tutors.[22]

Perhaps at first thought it may seem singular that so many unschooled
geniuses should have risen to be famous in their several departments,
but it is because they were geniuses. They saw and understood nature and
art by intuition, while those of us who can claim no such distinction
have been compelled to acquire knowledge by plummet and line, so to
speak. "The ambition of a man of parts," says Sydney Smith, "should be
not to know books, but things; not to show other men that he has read
Locke, and Montesquieu, and Beccaria, and Dumont, but to show that he
knows the subjects upon which they have written." Let us pursue our
examples still further, for they are both interesting and remarkable
when brought thus together.

Benjamin West[23] was born in Pennsylvania, a poor farmer's boy; but the
genius of art was in him, and after patient study he became an eminent
painter, finally succeeding Sir Joshua Reynolds as president of the
Royal Academy in 1792. George III. was his personal friend and patron.
He was so thoroughly appreciated there that he made England his home,
where he died in 1820. John Britton, author of the "Beauties of England
and Wales," as well as of several valuable works on architecture, was
born in a mud cabin in Wiltshire, and was for years engaged as a
bar-tender. He was finally turned adrift by his employer with two
guineas in his pocket, but before his death his list of published books
exceeded eighty volumes! Sir Francis Chantrey, the eminent sculptor, was
in his minority a journeyman carver in wood. Talma, the great tragic
actor of France, and favorite of the first Napoleon, was a dentist by
trade. Gifford, the eminent English critic and essayist, was "graduated"
from a cobbler's bench. When Cicero was asked concerning his lineage, he
replied, "I commence an ancestry." Beaumarchais, the successful French
dramatist, author of the "Barber of Seville" and the "Marriage of
Figaro," was a watchmaker by trade, but developed such versatile genius
as finally to excite the jealousy of the unscrupulous Voltaire.

Thomas Ball, the sculptor, who has done so much to ornament the parks
and squares of Boston, used as a lad to sweep out the halls of the
Boston Museum.[24] The author has often been within the walls of his
pleasant studio in the environs of Florence, adjoining his charming
domestic establishment. It is near to the spot where Powers produced his
"Greek Slave," and overlooks the lovely city of Florence, divided by the
Arno. Andrew Jackson, who became President of the United States, was the
son of a poor Irish emigrant, and so was John C. Calhoun, the great
Southern statesman and Vice-President. Abraham Lincoln and the late
President Garfield were both sons of toil, the former being commonly
designated as "the rail-splitter," the latter as "the canal-boy." Andrew
Johnson was a journeyman tailor. Henry Wilson was a cobbler at the bench
until he was nearly twenty-one. So also was Andersen,[25] the Danish
novelist. Jasmin, who has been called the Burns of France, was the son
of a street beggar. Allan Cunningham, poet, novelist, and miscellaneous
writer, began life as a stone-mason; he became the father of four sons,
all of whom won distinction in literature. Among the father's novels was
that of "Paul Jones," which was remarkably successful. Dr. Isaac Miller,
Dean of Carlisle, began life as a weaver, and Dr. Prideaux, Bishop of
Worcester, earned his living in youth as a kitchen-boy at Oxford. Watt,
the great Scotch inventor, whose steam-engine has revolutionized modern
industry, and Whitney, inventor of the cotton-gin, were street gamins
in childhood. Both these inventors were thought by their associates to
be "beside themselves" as they grew towards maturity. "No man is quite
sane," says Emerson; "each has a vein of folly in his composition, a
slight determination of blood to the head, to make sure of holding him
hard to some one point which nature has taken to heart."

The world's great men, according to the acceptation of the term, have
not always been great scholars. General Nathaniel Greene, the successful
Revolutionary commander, second only in military skill to Washington,
was brought up at a blacksmith's forge. Horace Greeley, orator and
journalist, was the son of a poor New Hampshire farmer and earned his
living for years by setting type. William Sturgeon the able and famous
electrician, Samuel Drew the English essayist, and Bloomfield the poet,
all rose from the cobbler's bench; and so did Thomas Edwards, the
profound naturalist. Robert Dodsley, the poet, dramatist, and friend of
Pope began life as a London footman in livery. His tragedy of "Cleone"
was so successful and well constructed, that Dr. Johnson said, "If Otway
had written it, no other of his pieces would have been remembered,"
which was certainly extravagant praise.[26] Douglas Jerrold was born in
a garret at Sheerness. Hobson, one of England's admirals, was a
tailor's apprentice in early life. Huntington, the remarkable preacher
and revivalist, was originally a coal-heaver, and Bewick, the father of
wood-engraving, was a laborer in a coal mine for many years.

John Gay, the English poet, was not "born with a silver spoon in his
mouth," but in youth he came up to London, where he served as a clerk to
a silk-mercer. "How long he continued behind the counter," says Dr.
Johnson, "or with what degree of softness and dexterity he received and
accommodated the ladies, as he probably took no delight in telling it,
is not known." He wrote comedies, fables, farces, and ballads, and wrote
well, and was vastly popular. Gay was a great gourmand, very lazy, and
fond of society.[27] The silk-mercer's clerk attained the much-coveted
honor of resting at last in Westminster Abbey. Boffin, the great
navigator, served at first before the mast as a common sailor. Robert
Dick, the geologist and botanist, followed his trade as a baker through
his whole life.

Would it not seem, in the light of these many instances, that practical
labor forms the best training even for genius?

Linnæus (Karl von Linné), the great Swedish botanist, the most
influential naturalist of the eighteenth century, was a shoemaker's
apprentice. His works upon his favorite study are authority with
students of science all over the world. He became physician to the king
and made his home at Stockholm, but roamed over all Scandinavia in
pursuing his special science of botany and also that of zoölogy. He will
always be remembered as having been the first to perfect a systematic
and scientific classification of plants and animals. He lies buried in
the Upsala Cathedral.

Thorwaldsen, the great Danish sculptor, was the son of an humble
Icelandic fisherman, but by reason of native genius he rose to bear the
name of the greatest of modern sculptors. He left in the Copenhagen
museum alone six hundred grand examples of the art he adorned. Many of
our readers will remember having seen near Lucerne, Switzerland, one of
his most remarkable pieces of sculpture, representing a wounded and
dying lion of colossal size, designed to commemorate the heroic fidelity
of the Swiss guards who fell Aug. 10, 1792. Thorwaldsen was passionately
fond of children, so that the moment he entered a house he gathered all
the juveniles about him; and in most of his marble groups he introduces
children. He never married, but made his beautiful mistress, the Roman
Fortunata, celebrated by repeating her face in many of his ideal groups.
Thorwaldsen gave an impulse to art in his native country which has no
like example in history; indeed, art is to-day the religion of
Copenhagen, and Thorwaldsen is its prophet.

George Stephenson, the English engineer and inventor, was in his youth a
stoker in a colliery, learning to read and write at a laborers' evening
school. John Jacob Astor began life as a pedler in the streets of New
York, where his descendants own a hundred million dollars worth of real
estate.[28] The elder Vanderbilt, famous not alone for his millions but
also for his vast enterprise in the development of commerce and
railroads, served as a cabin-boy on a North River sloop during several
years of his youth. George Peabody, the great American philanthropist
and millionnaire, was born in poverty. Fisher Ames, the eminent
statesman and orator, eked out a precarious living for years as a
country pedagogue. Greatness lies not alone in the possession of genius,
but in the right and effective use of it.

We have given examples sufficient to illustrate this branch of our
subject, though they might be almost indefinitely extended. It was
Daniel Webster[29] who said that "a man not ashamed of himself need not
be ashamed of his early condition in life." Titles are vendible, but
genius is the gift of Heaven.

Enthusiasm is the heritage of youth; it plans with audacity and executes
with vigor: "It is the leaping lightning," according to Emerson, "not to
be measured by the horse-power of the understanding." In the
accomplishment of great deeds it is undoubtedly the keenest spur, and
consequently those who have become eminent in the history of the world
have mostly achieved their greatness before gray hairs have woven
themselves about their brows. Unless the tree has borne ample blossoms
in the spring, we shall look in vain for a generous crop in the fall.
Notwithstanding the abundance of axioms as to youth and rashness
dwelling together, we have ample evidence that it is the period of
deeds, when the senses are unworn and the whole man is in the vigor of
strength and earnestness. Goethe tells us that the destiny of any nation
depends upon the opinions of its young men. Let us recall a few
examples, in corroboration of this view, among those who have made their
mark upon the times in which they lived.

Alexander the Great reigned over the Macedonians at sixteen; Scipio was
but twenty-nine at the zenith of his military glory; Charles XII.[30]
was only nineteen when, as commander-in-chief, he won the famous battle
of Narva; Condé was twenty-two when he gained the battle of Rocroi;
Scipio the Younger conquered Carthage at thirty-six, and Cortes subdued
Mexico at the same age. At thirty Charlemagne was master of France and
Germany; at thirty-two Clive had established the British power in India.
Hannibal won his greatest victories before he was thirty, and Napoleon
was but twenty-seven when he outgeneralled the veteran marshals of
Austria on the plains of Italy. George Washington won his first battle
as a colonel at twenty-two; Lafayette was a major-general in our army at
the age of twenty. Nor are we to look only for youthful greatness among
those who have won laurels in war. William Pitt was prime minister of
England at twenty-four; Calhoun had achieved national greatness before
he was thirty; while the names of John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and
the elder Pitt in England also suggest themselves in this
connection.[31]

Handel composed sonatas at ten years of age; Mozart was equally
precocious, and died at thirty-six, at which age Shakespeare had written
"Hamlet." Bellini, the composer, had produced "II Pirata," "La
Sonnambula," and "La Norma," before his thirtieth year; "I Puritani" was
finished at thirty, and he died two years later. Charles Matthews the
elder began to write for the press at fourteen, and Moore wrote verses
for print at the same age; undoubtedly both were open to cool and
judicious criticism.[32] Henry Kirke White published a volume of poems
at seventeen. Bryant, the first American poet of celebrity, began to
write verses at the age of ten, and his most celebrated poem,
"Thanatopsis," was written before he was twenty. Fitz-Greene Halleck,
author of "Marco Bozzaris," wrote verses for the magazines at fourteen.
Congreve was at the height of his literary fame at four-and-twenty,--he
to whom Dryden said Shakespeare had bequeathed his poetical crown, and
to whom Pope dedicated his version of the Iliad. Watt invented the
steam-engine before he was thirty. The reproof administered by his
grandmother for his idleness in taking off and replacing the cover of
the teakettle, and "playing with the steam to no purpose," will occur to
the reader. Joan of Arc[33] was but eighteen when she raised the siege
of Orléans and conquered city after city, until Charles VII. was crowned
king at Rheims.

Guizot, the distinguished French statesman and historian, seems to have
been "a child who had no childhood." At eleven years of age he was able
to read in their respective languages Thucydides, Demosthenes, Dante,
Schiller, Gibbon, and Shakespeare.

Robert Hall, the eloquent English clergyman, was a remarkable instance
of early mental development. It is said that before he was ten years of
age he perused with interest and understanding Edwards's treatises on
the "Affections" and on the "Will." His sermons, essays, and writings
generally were eagerly read and admired by the public; but excessive
application at last brought on insanity. It was gracefully said of him
that his imperial fancy laid all nature under tribute. Even in madness
he did not lose his power of retort. A hypocritical condoler visited him
in the mad-house, and asked in a servile tone: "Pray, what brought you
here, Mr. Hall?" Hall touched his brow significantly with his finger,
and replied, "What'll never bring you, sir,--too much brains!"[34]

Macaulay had already won an exalted reputation for prose and poetry
before he was twenty-three, and N. P. Willis, before he left college,
had achieved enduring fame by his sacred poems,[35] which, in fact, he
never afterwards excelled in a long and successful literary career.
Schiller wrote and published in his fourteenth year a poem on Moses.
Klopstock began his "Messiah" at seventeen, and Tasso had produced his
"Rinaldo," and completed the first three cantos of "Jerusalem
Delivered," before he was nineteen. Milton was an unremitting student at
ten. Southey began to write verses before he was eleven, Chaucer and
Cowley at twelve, and Leigh Hunt at about the same age. Pope,[36] like
so many others, began to write poetry as a child, thus proving that
"poets are born and not made." Chatterton, the remarkable literary
prodigy, died at eighteen, but not until he had established a lasting
reputation. Bulwer-Lytton was a successful author at about the same age,
and so were Keats and Bayard Taylor. Dickens produced the "Pickwick
Papers" before he was twenty-five, and it may safely be said that in
wit, humor, and originality he never surpassed that delicious book.
These seem interesting facts to remember, though they do not establish
any actual criterion, since the thoughtful student of the past can
adduce many notable examples of mature development in art and
literature.

Among these is that of Edmund Burke, on the whole the greatest of
English philosophical statesmen. He is the most remarkable instance of a
number of men of genius who seem to have grown younger as they grew
older,--that is, mentally and morally. Macaulay has noticed that Bacon's
writings towards the close of his career exceeded those of his youth and
manhood "in eloquence, in sweetness and variety of expression, and in
richness of illustration."[37] He adds: "In this respect the history of
his mind bears some resemblance to the history of the mind of Burke. The
treatises on the 'Sublime and Beautiful,'[38] though written on a
subject which the coldest metaphysician could hardly treat without being
occasionally betrayed into florid writing, is the most unadorned of
Burke's works. It appeared when he was twenty-five or twenty-six. When,
at forty, he wrote the 'Thoughts on the Causes of the Present
Discontents,' his reason and judgment had reached their full maturity,
but his eloquence was in its splendid dawn. At fifty his rhetoric was as
rich as good taste would admit; and when he died, at almost seventy, it
had become ungracefully gorgeous. In his youth he wrote on the emotions
produced by mountains and cascades, by the masterpieces of painting and
sculpture, by the faces and necks of beautiful women, in the style of a
Parliamentary report. In his old age he discussed treaties and tariffs
in the most fervid and brilliant language of romance."

Socrates learned to play on musical instruments in his old age. Cato at
eighty first studied the Greek language, and Plutarch did not apply
himself to learn the Latin language until about the same age.
Theophrastus[39] began his "Character of Man" on his ninetieth birthday.
Peter Rusard, one of the fathers of French poetry, did not develop his
poetic faculty until nearly fifty. Arnauld, the learned French
theologian and philosopher, translated Josephus in his eightieth year.
Lope de Vega, one of the most learned men of the sixteenth century,
wrote his best at seventy years of age. Dr. Johnson applied himself to
learn the Dutch language at seventy. At seventy-three, when quite
feeble, he composed a Latin prayer to test to his own satisfaction the
loss or retention of his mental faculties. Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales"
were the work of the author's last years. Franklin's philosophical
pursuits were but fairly begun at fifty. La Mothe le Vayer's best
treatises were written after he was eighty years of age, and Izaak
Walton's when he was nearly ninety. Thomas Hobbes, the remarkable
English philosopher and author, published his version of the Odyssey in
his eighty-seventh year, and his Iliad in his eighty-eighth.
Winckelmann,[40] author of the "History of Ancient Art," lived in
ignorance and obscurity until the prime of his life, when he became
famous. Landor was busy with authorship until after he was eighty. The
Earl of Chatham made his most remarkable oratorical effort at seventy,
and our own American orator and statesman, Robert C. Winthrop, at a
still later period of his life. Fontenelle continued his literary
pursuits until he was ninety-nine, "blossoming in the winter of his
days," as Lord Orrery wrote of him. Ménage, the celebrated French critic
and scholar, wrote sonnets and epigrams at ninety. Julius Scaliger, the
renowned Italian scholar and poet, dictated to his son, at the age of
seventy, two hundred verses of his own composition from memory. Mr.
Gladstone and John Bright, the English statesmen, are more recent
examples of oratorical, mental, and physical powers in advanced years.
George Bancroft the American historian, in his eighty-sixth year is
still engaged in authorship, and Whittier and Holmes are writing with
unabated vigor at nearly eighty years of age. Miss Elizabeth Peabody at
eighty-four is still a vigorous writer and active philanthropist, and
the same may be said of Mrs. Julia Ward Howe at the age of sixty-six.
Mrs. Howe, indeed, is one of the foremost of American women, whether we
regard the ripeness of her scholarship, the breadth of her
understanding, the richness of her imagination, or the quiet intrepidity
with which she champions great reforms.




CHAPTER II.


Who does not enjoy recalling these silent friends, favorite authors
grown dear to us by age and long association? Some one has said that
authors, like coins, grow dearer as they grow old. Indeed, Samuel
Rogers, the banker and poet, declared that when friends at his famous
"breakfasts" were praising a new book, he forthwith began to re-read an
old one. All these writers were double-sided, so to speak; they had
their book natures and their human natures, and it is when we prefer to
contemplate them in the latter aspect that we like them best. Carlyle
calls them "the vanguard in the march of mind, the intellectual
backwoodsmen reclaiming from the idle wilderness new territory for the
thought and activity of their happier brethren." It is true that we can
form but a partial judgment of authors by their books, their motives
being not always as pure as we are inclined to believe.[41] A traitor
like Bolingbroke is quite capable of writing a captivating book on
patriotism; and it has been said if Satan were to write one, it would be
upon the advantages of virtue.

It is certain he has ever shown such a hearty appreciation of virtue
that he holds in highest estimation his success in corrupting it.
Examples flash across the memory. There was Sir Thomas More advocating
toleration, while he was himself a fierce persecutor; Sallust declaring
against the licentiousness of his age, yet addicted to habitual
debaucheries; Byron assuming a misanthropy which he never felt; and
Cowley boasting of his mistresses, though he had not the courage even to
address one. Smollett's descriptions and scenes were often indelicate,
though he was himself in that respect a faultless man. "As a rule, the
author who is not in genius far above his productions must be a
second-rate one at best," says Bulwer-Lytton. Sometimes we detect
striking likenesses between the author and his works. Goldsmith, for
instance, was the same hero to low-bred women, and the same coward to
ladies, that he depicts in his charming comedy. It is difficult,
however, in the light of Handel's inspired music, to realize what an
animal nature possessed him in his every-day mood,--what a glutton he
was at table; or to reconcile the sublime strains of Mozart with his
trivial personality.[42] Still, Buffon persistently declares, "Le style
c'est l'homme."

Addison, recognized as the purest and most perspicuous writer of the
English language, though exercising such mastership of the pen, had no
oral ability, and rarely attempted to talk in social circles. He said of
himself that though he had a hundred pounds in the bank, he had no small
coin in his pocket.[43]

Dr. Johnson and Coleridge were famous for their colloquial facility, but
both of these were rather lecturers than talkers, however delightful in
this respect the latter may have been. Johnson during his life was
undoubtedly more of a power as a talker than as a writer. It has been
said that Scott talked more poetry and Edmund Burke more eloquence than
they ever wrote. Emerson thought that "better things are said, more
incisive, more wit and insight are dropped in talk and forgotten, than
gets into books." E. H. Chapin and H. W. Beecher have talked sounder and
more brilliant theology than they ever preached from the pulpit.
Spontaneous thoughts come from our inner consciousness; sermons and
essays, from the cooler action of the brain. Coleridge, on first meeting
Byron, entertained the poet with one of his monologues, wherein he
ascended into the seventh heaven upon wings of theology and metaphysics.
Leigh Hunt described the scene to Charles Lamb, and expressed his wonder
that Coleridge should have chosen so unsympathetic an auditor. "Oh, it
was only his fun," explained Lamb; "there's an immense deal of quiet
humor about Coleridge!" Wordsworth speaks of him as the "rapt one, with
the godlike forehead," the "heaven-eyed creature." Hazlitt says that "no
idea ever entered the mind of man, but at some period or other it had
passed over his head with rustling pinions." Talfourd writes of seeing
"the palm-trees wave, and the pyramids tower, in the long perspective of
his style." When Coleridge once asked Lamb, "Charles, did you ever hear
me preach?" he received the quiet reply, "I never heard you do anything
else." Rogers tells us: "Coleridge was a marvellous talker. One morning,
when Hookham Frere also breakfasted with me, Coleridge talked for three
hours without intermission about poetry, and so admirably that I wish
every word he uttered had been written down." Madame de Staël said of
him that he was great in monologue, but that he had no idea of dialogue.


Macaulay was also remarkable for his conversational powers, which were
greatly aided by an excellent memory. He has been accused of talking too
much; and Sydney Smith once said of him: "He is certainly more agreeable
since his return from India. His enemies might perhaps have said
before--though I never did so--that he talked rather too much; but now
he has occasional flashes of silence that make his conversation
perfectly delightful!" In a party in which eminent men are present, the
rule is said to be that, for good conversation, the number of talkers
should never be fewer than the Graces or more than the Muses. Goldsmith,
who wrote so charmingly and exhibited such a remarkable versatility with
the pen, could make no figure in conversation. Fox, Bentley, Burke,
Curran, and Swift were all brilliant talkers; Tasso, Dante, Gray, and
Dryden[44] were all taciturn. Of Ben Jonson it is said that he was
mostly without speech, sitting by the hour quite silent in society,
sucking in the wine and humor of his companions.

Sheridan had the reputation of being a brilliant conversationalist; but
we all know that many of his "impromptus" were laboriously prepared
beforehand, and that he was wont to lie in wait silently for half an
evening watching his opportunity to discharge the arrows of his polished
wit. One would be glad to learn how it was with Shakespeare in society.
He could hold his own in a controversy, however, as Thomas Fuller, in
his "Worthies of England," says, "Many were the wet-combats between him
and Ben Jonson:[45] which two I behold like a Spanish great galleon and
an English man-of-war; master Jonson, like the former, was built far
higher in learning; solid, but slow, in his performances. Shakespeare,
like the English man-of-war, lesser in bulk but lighter in sailing,
could turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds
by the quickness of his wit and invention." Shakespeare himself has
said, "Silence is only commendable in a neat's tongue dried and a maid
not vendible;" but the ancient stoics thought that by silence they heard
other men's imperfections and concealed their own.

The diplomatist Metternich said he had never known more than ten or
twelve persons with whom it was pleasant to converse. Margaret Fuller
said Carlyle's talk was an amazement to her, though she was familiar
with his writings. His conversation, she declared, was a splendor
scarcely to be faced with steady eye. He did not converse--only
harangued. She thought him "arrogant and overbearing, but it was not the
arrogance of littleness, nor self-love, but rather the arrogance of some
old Scandinavian conqueror; it was his nature, the untamable impulse
that had given him power to crush the dragons. She was not led to love
or revere him, but liked him heartily,--liked to see him the powerful
smith, the Siegfried, melting all the old iron in his furnace till it
glows to a sunset red and burns you, if you senselessly go too
near."[46]

When Dr. Johnson was asked why he was not invited out to dine as
Garrick[47] was, he answered, as if it was a great triumph to him,
"Because great lords and ladies don't like to have their mouths
stopped!" He indulged a furious hatred to Americans, and whenever there
was an opportunity sneered at them even more bitterly than he did at
Scotchmen. It will be remembered that he thought something could be made
out of a Scotchman "if you caught him young;" but he would not admit
even this saving clause as regarded Americans. He said, "I am willing to
love all, all mankind, except an American." He called them "robbers and
pirates;" adding, "I'd burn and destroy them!"

These words were addressed to Miss Anna Seward, of Lichfield. It was in
the grammar school of this ancient cathedral town that Addison, Dr.
Johnson, and Garrick received their early education, and Johnson was a
native of the place. Miss Seward's father was the canon resident of
Lichfield Cathedral. In his family there was a beautiful young lady
named Honora Sneyd, a companion to his daughter. John André, a cultured
London youth, fell in love with Honora, and was tacitly accepted. The
young man was somewhat suddenly called back to the metropolis on
business, and a separation thus ensued which seemed to wean the lady's
affections from him, so that she soon after married a Mr. Edgeworth and
in the course of time became the mother of Maria Edgeworth, the
well-known novel-writer.[48] John André remained faithful to his first
love, and came to America carrying in his bosom a miniature of Honora
suspended from his neck. His sad fate during our Revolutionary War is
well known to all. He was the Major André whom Washington reluctantly
executed as a spy, and whose memorial is now conspicuous in Westminster
Abbey.

Peter Corneille, the great French dramatic poet, had nothing in his
exterior that indicated his genius. As to his conversational powers,
they were simply insipid, and never failed to weary all listeners.
Nature had endowed him with brilliant gifts, but forgot to grant him the
ordinary accomplishments. He did not even speak correct French, which he
never failed to write with perfection. When his friends represented to
him how much more he might please by not disdaining to correct these
trivial errors, he would smile and say, "I am none the less Peter
Corneille!" We learn from Rogers that in the early days of his
popularity Byron was quite diffident in society, or at least never
ventured to take part in the conversation. If any one happened to let
fall an observation which offended him, he never attempted to reply, but
treasured it up for days, and would then come out with some cutting
remarks, giving them as his deliberate opinion, the result of his
experience of the individual's character. Southey[49] was stiff,
reserved, sedate, and so wrapped up in a garb of asceticism that Charles
Lamb once stutteringly told him he was "m-made for a m-m-monk, but
somehow the co-co-cowl didn't fit."

Racine made this confidential confession to his son: "Do not think that
I am sought after by the great on account of my dramas; Corneille
composed nobler verses than mine, but no one notices him, and he only
pleases by the mouth of the actors. I never allude to my works when with
men of the world, but I amuse them about matters they like to hear. My
talent with them consists not in making them feel that I have any, but
in showing them that they have." The well-remembered saying about
Goldsmith's lack of conversational power is excellent because it was so
true; namely, that "he wrote like an angel and talked like poor
Poll."[50] Fisher Ames and Rufus Choate were distinguished for their
conversational powers. Stuart, the American painter, was remarkable in
this respect; and so were Washington Allston, Edgar A. Poe, Margaret
Fuller, and the late Caleb Cushing. The lady just named was considered
to be the best talker of her sex since Madame de Staël. Indeed, those
who knew her well said she talked even better than she wrote, which was
saying much.

Charles Sumner used to relate a talk in a company where Daniel Webster
was present. The question under discussion was what were the best means
of culture. Webster was silent until all had spoken. He then said:
"Gentlemen, you have overlooked one of the means of culture which I
consider of the first importance, and from which I have gained the most;
that is, good conversation."[51]

Whipple has said in one of his essays that "real, earnest conversation
is a kind of intellectual cannibalism, where strong minds feed on each
other and mightily enjoy the repast."

Charles Lamb's most sportive essays, which read as though they came
almost spontaneously from his pen, are known to have been the result of
intense brain labor. He would spend a whole week in elaborating a single
humorous letter to a friend. Lamb was so sensitive concerning
proof-reading as to be the dread of the printers. It is said of the
poet-laureate of England that he has been known to re-write a poem
twenty times and more before he was satisfied to give it to the printer.
Dickens, when writing a book, was accustomed to shut himself up for days
together, and to work with fearful energy until the task was completed;
after which he would come forth presenting the appearance of a person
recovering from a fit of illness. The free-and-easy spirit which
characterizes his pages affords no evidence of the travail through which
their author passed in giving them birth. Bulwer-Lytton took matters
much more philosophically. He always worked at pen-craft leisurely,
never more than three or four hours a day; and yet by carefully
observing a system the aggregate of his productions was very large.
Balzac, after thinking over a subject, would retire to his study and
write it out half a dozen times before he gave the manuscript to the
printer, whom he afterwards tormented to the very verge of exasperation
by his proof alterations. To come nearer to our own time, we may remark
that Longfellow, whose versification seems always to have flowed with
such ease and fluency from his pen, was a slow and painstaking producer,
sometimes altering and amending until the original draft of an essay or
poem was quite improved out of sight.

Dr. Channing nearly drove his printers crazy; after his
manuscript--almost illegible by corrections and interlineations--had
been returned to them with alterations, omissions, and additions on the
first proof-sheets, he would ponder over, alter, and amend three or four
successive proofs before he finally allowed the result to meet the
public eye,--a new edition involving another series of alterations. The
lyric which cost Tennyson the most trouble was "Come into the Garden,
Maud." It is said to have been held back from the public after it had
been a year in his hands, going through repeated processes of
alteration. What time indorses, requires time to create and finish. To
this determination of Tennyson to condense all his thoughts into the
smallest space, and never to expand when by patient labor he can
contract, we owe the few lines in which he states in the "Princess" the
whole nebular theory of the universe as expounded by Kant and Laplace;
and how much reflection must have been required to condense the
description of the fundamental defect of English law, on which volumes
have been written, as he has done in "Aylmer's Field:"--

    "The lawless science of our law,
    That codeless myriad of precedent,
    That wilderness of single instances."

When we observe good workmanship, whether it be by a stone-mason, a
cabinet-maker, or a writer, we may be sure that it has cost much patient
labor. His biographer tells us that Moore thought ten or fifteen lines
in twenty-four hours a good day's accomplishment in poetry; and at this
rate he wrote "Lalla Rookh."[52] Wordsworth wrote his verses, laid them
aside for weeks, then, taking them up, frequently rewrote them a score
of times before he called them finished. Buffon's "Studies of Nature"
cost him fifty years of writing and re-writing before the work was
published. John Foster, the profound and eloquent English essayist,
often spent hours upon a single sentence. Ten years elapsed between the
first sketch of Goldsmith's "Traveller" and its final completion.
Rochefoucauld[53] spent fifteen years over his little book of Maxims,
altering some of them thirty times. Rogers admitted that he had more
than once spent ten days upon a single verse before he turned it to suit
him. Vaugelas, the great French scholar, devoted twenty years to his
admirable translation of "Quintus Curtius."

Some authors have produced with such rapidity as to approach
improvisation. Perhaps the most remarkable instance of this was in the
case of Lope de Vega, who composed and wrote a versified drama in a
single day, and is known to have done so for seven consecutive days.
Contemporary with Shakespeare and Cervantes, De Vega has left behind him
two thousand original dramas sparkling with vivacity of dialogue and
richness of invention. Soldier, duellist, poet, sailor, and priest, his
long life was one of intense activity and adventure.[54] The name of
Hardy, the French dramatic author and actor, occurs to us in this
connection; though an inferior genius to De Vega, he wrote over six
hundred original dramas. He was considered the first dramatic writer of
the days of Henry IV. and Louis XIII., before whom Hardy often appeared
upon the stage personating the heroes of his own dramas.

Prynne, the English antiquary, politician, and pamphlet-writer, sat down
early in the morning to his composition. Every two hours his man brought
him a roll and a pot of ale as refreshment; and so he continued until
night, when he partook of a hearty dinner. One of his pamphlets was
entitled "A Scourge for Stage-Players," which was considered so
scurrilous that the Star-Chamber sentenced him to pay a heavy fine, to
be exposed in the pillory, to lose his ears, and to be imprisoned for
life. He was finally released from prison. While he was confined in the
pillory, a pyramid of his offending pamphlets was made close at hand, to
windward of his position, and set on fire, so that the author was very
nearly choked to death by the smoke. He was almost as incessant and
inveterate a writer as Petrarch, and considered being debarred from pen
and ink an act more barbarous than the loss of his ears. However, he
partially obviated his want of the usual facilities by writing a whole
volume on his prison walls while confined in the Tower of London.

Byron wrote the "Corsair" in ten days, which was an average of nearly
two hundred lines a day,--a fact which he acknowledged to Moore with a
degree of shame. He said he would not confess it to everybody,
considering it to be a humiliating fact, proving his own want of
judgment in publishing, and the public in reading, "things which cannot
have stamina for permanent attention." The surpassing beauty of the
"Corsair," however, excuses all the author said or did in connection
with it. It may nevertheless be affirmed that, as a rule, no great work
has ever been performed with ease, or ever will be accomplished without
encountering the throes of time and labor. Dante, we remember, saw
himself "growing lean" over his "Divine Comedy." Mary Russell Mitford,
the charming English authoress, dramatist, poet, and novelist, who so
excelled in her sketches of country life, says of herself: "I write with
extreme slowness, labor, and difficulty; and, whatever you may think,
there is a great difference of facility in different minds. I am the
slowest writer, I suppose, in England, and touch and retouch
incessantly." Her life was one of constant labor and self-abnegation in
behalf of a worthless, selfish, and imperious father. He was a robust,
showy, wasteful profligate, and a gambler. A doctor by profession, he
was a spendthrift and sensualist by occupation. He contracted a venal
marriage with an heiress much older than himself, and after squandering
her entire fortune he fell back upon his daughter as the bread-winner
for the whole family. By a remarkable chance she became the possessor of
a great lottery prize, from which she realized twenty thousand pounds,
every penny of which her beastly father drank and gambled away. Still,
the devotion and industry of the daughter never waned for a moment. Her
patient struggles have placed her name on the roll of fame, while her
father's has sunk into deserved oblivion.

De Tocqueville wrote to his publishers: "You must think me very slow.
You would forgive me if you knew how hard it is for me to satisfy
myself, and how impossible it is for me to finish things incompletely."
Horace suggested that authors should keep their literary productions
from the public eye for at least nine years, which certainly ought to
produce "the well-ripened fruit of sage delay." After a labor of eleven
years Virgil pronounced his Æneid imperfect. This recalls the Italian
saying, "One need not be a stag, neither ought one to be a tortoise."
Tasso's manuscript, which is still extant, is almost illegible because
of the number of alterations which he made after having written it.
Montaigne, "the Horace of Essayists," could not be induced, so lazy and
self-indulgent was he, to even look at the proof-sheets of his writings.
"I add, but I correct not," he said.

The writer of these pages has seen the original draft of Longfellow's
"Excelsior," so interlined and amended to suit the author's taste as to
make the manuscript rather difficult to decipher. The poet wrote a
back-hand, as it is called; that is, the letters sloped in the opposite
direction from the usual custom, and as a rule his writing was
remarkably legible. Coleridge was very methodical as to the time and
place of his composition. He told Hazlitt that he liked to compose
walking over uneven ground, or making his way through straggling
branches of undergrowth in the woods; which was a very affected and
erratic notion, and might better have been "whipped out of him."[55]
Wordsworth, on the contrary, found his favorite place for composing his
verses in walking back and forth upon the smooth paths of his garden,
among flowers and creeping vines. Hazlitt, in a critical analysis of the
two poets, traces a likeness to the style of each in his choice of
exercise while maturing his thoughts,--which, it would seem to us, is a
subtile deduction altogether too fine to signify anything.

Charles Dibdin, the famous London song-writer and musician, whose
sea-songs as published number over a thousand, caught his ideas "on the
fly." As an example, he was at a loss for something new to sing on a
certain occasion. A friend was with him in his lodgings and suggested
several themes. Suddenly the jar of a ladder against the street
lamp-post under his window was heard. It was a hint to his fertile
imagination, and Dibdin exclaimed, "The Lamplighter! That's it;
first-rate idea!" and stepping to the piano he finished both song and
words in an hour, and sang them in public with great éclat that very
night, under the title of "Jolly Dick, the Lamplighter." Like nearly all
such mercurial geniuses, Dibdin was generous, careless, and improvident
in his habits, dying at last poor and neglected.

Dr. Johnson was so extremely short-sighted that writing, re-writing, and
correcting upon paper were very inconvenient for him; he was therefore
accustomed to revolve a subject very carefully in his mind, forming
sentences and periods with minute care; and by means of his remarkable
memory he retained them with great precision for use and final
transmission to paper. When he began, therefore, with pen in hand, his
production of copy was very rapid, and it required scarcely any
corrections. Boswell says that posterity will be astonished when they
are told that many of these discourses, which might be supposed to be
labored with all the slow attention of literary leisure, were written in
haste, as the moments pressed, without even being read over by Johnson
before they were printed. Sir John Hawkins says that the original
manuscripts of the "Rambler" passed through his hands, "and by the
perusal of them I am warranted to say, as was said of Shakespeare by the
players of his time, that he never blotted a line." Johnson tells us
that he wrote the life of Savage in six-and-thirty hours. He also wrote
his "Hermit of Teneriffe" in a single night. When we consider the amount
of literary work performed by Johnson, say in the period of seven years,
while "he sailed a long and painful voyage round the world of the
English language," and produced his dictionary, we must give him credit
for the most remarkable industry and great rapidity of production.
During these seven years he found time also to complete his "Rambler,"
the "Vanity of Human Wishes," and his tragedy, besides several minor
literary performances. No wonder he developed hypochondria. Burke was a
very slow and painstaking producer; it is even said that he had all his
works printed at a private press before submitting them to his
publisher.

Hume was more rapid, even careless with his first edition of a work, but
went on correcting each new one to the day of his death.[56] Macaulay,
in his elaborate speeches, did not write them out beforehand, but
_thought_ them out, trusting to his memory to recall every epigrammatic
statement and every felicitous epithet which he had previously forged in
his mind, so that when the time came for their delivery they appeared to
spring forth as the spontaneous outpouring of his feelings and
sentiments, excited by the questions discussed. Wendell Phillips
followed a similar method.

Thomas Paine, the political and deistical writer, was under contract to
furnish a certain amount of matter for each number of the "Pennsylvania
Magazine." Aitken the publisher had great difficulty in getting him to
fulfil his agreement. Paine's indolence was such that he was always
behindhand with his engagements. Finally, after it had become too late
to delay longer, Aitken would go to his house, tell him the printers
were standing idle waiting for his copy, and insist upon his
accompanying him to the office. Paine would do so, when pen, ink, and
paper would be placed before him, and he would sit thoughtfully, but
produce nothing until Aitken gave him a large glass of brandy. Even then
he would delay. The publisher naturally feared to give him a second
glass, thinking that it would disqualify him altogether, but, on the
contrary, his brain seemed to be illumined by it, and when he had
swallowed the third glass,--quite enough to have made Mr. Aitken dead
drunk,--he would write with rapidity, intelligence, and precision, his
ideas appearing to flow faster than he could express them on paper. The
copy produced under the fierce stimulant was remarkable for correctness,
and fit for the press without revision.[57]

Charlotte Bronté was a very slow producer of literary work, and was
obliged to choose her special days. Often for a week, and sometimes
longer, she could not write at all; her brain seemed to be dormant.
Then, without any premonition or apparent inducing cause, she would
awake in the morning, go to her writing-desk, and the ideas would come
with more rapidity than she could pen them. Mrs. Gaskell the novelist,
a friend of the Brontés, was exactly the opposite in her style of
composition. She could sit down at any hour and lose herself in the
process of the story she was composing. She was also a prolific
authoress, of whom George Sand said: "She has done what neither I nor
other female writers in France can accomplish; she has written novels
which excite the deepest interest in men of the world, and which every
girl will be the better for reading." Bacon[58] often had music played
in the room adjoining his library, saying that he gathered inspiration
from its strains. Warburton said music was always a necessity to him
when engaged in intellectual labor. Curran, the great Irish barrister,
had also his favorite mode of meditation; it was with his violin in
hand. He would seem to forget himself, running voluntaries over the
strings, while his imagination, collecting its tones, was kindling and
invigorating all his faculties for the coming contest at the bar. Bishop
Beveridge adopted Bacon's plan, and said, "When music sounds sweetest in
my ears, truth commonly flows the clearest in my mind." Even the cold,
passionless Carlyle said music was to him a kind of inarticulate speech
which led him to the edge of the infinite, and permitted him for a
moment to gaze into it.

John Foster, the English essayist, declared that the special quality of
genius was "the power to light its own fire;" and certainly Sir Walter
Scott was a shining example of this truth. Shelley, a poet of finer but
less robust fibre, decided that "the mind, in creating, is as a fading
coal, which some passing influence, like an invisible wind, wakens into
momentary brightness."

As already remarked, ten years transpired between the first sketch of
the "Traveller," which was made in Switzerland, and its publication; but
the history of the "Vicar of Wakefield" was quite different. Goldsmith
hastened the closing pages to raise money, being terribly pressed for
the payment of numerous small bills, and also by his landlady for rent.
He was actually under arrest for this last debt, and sent to Dr. Johnson
to come to him at once. Understanding very well what was the trouble,
Johnson sent him a guinea, and came in person as soon as he could. He
found, on arriving, that Goldsmith had already broken the guinea and was
drinking a bottle of wine purchased therewith. The Doctor put the cork
into the bottle, and began to talk over the means of extricating the
impecunious author from his troubles. Goldsmith told Johnson that he had
just finished a small book, and wished he would look at it; perhaps it
would bring in some money. He brought forth the manuscript of the
"Vicar of Wakefield." Johnson hastily glanced over it, paused, read a
chapter carefully, bade Goldsmith to be of good cheer, and hastened away
with the new story to Newbury the publisher, who, solely on Johnson's
recommendation, gave him sixty pounds for the manuscript and threw it
into his desk, where it remained undisturbed for two years.[59]

A voluminous writer once explained to Goldsmith the advantage of
employing an amanuensis. "How do you manage it?" asked Goldsmith. "Why,
I walk about the room and dictate to a clever man, who puts down very
correctly all that I tell him, so that I have nothing to do but to look
it over and send it to the printers." Goldsmith was delighted with the
idea, and asked his friend to send the scribe to him. The next day the
penman came with his implements, ready to catch his new employer's words
and to record them. Goldsmith paced the room with great thoughtfulness,
just as his friend had described to him, back and forth, back and forth,
several times; but after racking his brain to no purpose for half an
hour, he gave it up. He handed the scribe a guinea, saying, "It won't
do, my friend; I find that my head and hand must work together."

Milton dictated that immortal poem, "Paradise Lost," his daughters being
his amanuenses; but Milton was then blind. It is said of Julius Cæsar
that while writing a despatch he could at the same time dictate seven
letters to as many clerks. This seems almost miraculous; but in our own
day Paul Morphy has performed quite as difficult a feat at chess,
playing several games at once, blindfolded.

One of the most eminent and eloquent of American preachers and
lecturers, Thomas Starr King, was accustomed to dictate to an
amanuensis; but when a difficulty would occur in developing his thought,
he would take the pen in his own hand, and, abstracting himself entirely
from the wondering reporter by his side, would spend perhaps half an
hour in deeper thinking and more exact expression than when he dictated.
Those who have examined his manuscript since his death easily perceive
that the portions of a sermon or a lecture which he personally wrote are
better than those which he poured forth to his amanuensis as he walked
the room. On one occasion a friend who was in favor of making the pen
and brain work together went to hear Mr. King deliver a lecture on Pope
Gregory VII. (Hildebrand), and at its conclusion told the lecturer that
he could distinguish, without seeing the manuscript, the portions he
wrote with his own hand from those he dictated. He succeeded so well, in
the course of half an hour's conversation, as to surprise the orator by
hitting on the passages in dispute, and proving his case.

To write an acceptable book, poem, or essay, is quite as much of a trade
as to make a clock or shoe a horse. To produce easy-flowing sentences,
as they finally appear before the reader's eye, has cost much careful
thought, long and patient practice, and even with some famous authors,
as we have seen, many hours of writing and re-writing. So far as it is
applied to authorship, we are not surprised at Hogarth's remark: "I know
no such thing as genius; genius is nothing but labor and diligence."
Buffon's definition is nearly the same; he says, "Genius is only great
patience." Authors are generally very commonplace representatives of
humanity, and remarkably like the average citizen whom we meet in our
daily walk. Rogers, in his "Table Talk," says: "When literature is the
sole business of life, it becomes a drudgery; when we are able to resort
to it only at certain hours, it is a charming relaxation. In my early
years I was a banker's clerk, obliged to be at the desk every day from
ten to five o'clock, and I shall never forget the delight with which, on
returning home, I used to read and write during the evening." He was a
great reader, but said that "a man who attempts to read all the new
publications must often do as a flea does--skip."[60]

To recur to Charles Dickens, is it generally known that his favorite
novel of "David Copperfield" partially relates to the history of his own
boyhood? The story of David's employment, when a child, in washing and
labelling blacking-bottles in a London cellar, was true of Dickens
himself. If it were possible to read between the lines, we should not
infrequently find the most effective narrative sketches little less than
biography or autobiography. Thackeray and Dickens both wrote under the
thin gauze of fiction. "Vivian Gray" is but a photograph of its
dilettante author; and every character drawn by Charlotte Bronté is a
true portrait, all being confined within so small a circle as to be
easily recognizable. Smollett sat for his own personality in that of
Roderick Random; while Scott drew many of his most strongly
individualized characters, like that of Dominie Sampson, from people in
his immediate circle.

Coleridge says of Milton: "In 'Paradise Lost,' indeed in every one of
his poems, it is Milton himself whom you see. His Satan, his Adam, his
Raphael, almost his Eve, are all John Milton; and it is a sense of this
intense egotism that gives one the greatest pleasure in reading Milton's
works." It is well known that many of Byron's[61] poetical plots are
almost literally his personal experiences. This was especially the case
as to the "Giaour." A beautiful female slave was thrown into the sea for
infidelity, and was terribly avenged by her lover, while Byron was in
the East; being impressed with the dramatic character of the tragedy, he
gave it expression in a poem. Carlyle says that Satan was Byron's grand
exemplar, the hero of his poetry, and the model, apparently, of his
conduct. In Bulwer-Lytton's "Disowned," one of his earliest and best
stories, the hero, Clarence Linden, a youth of eighteen, while
journeying as a pedestrian, makes the acquaintance of a free-and-easy
person named Cole,--a gypsy king,--in whose camp he passes the night:
all of which was an actual experience of Bulwer himself. Hans Christian
Andersen gives us many of his personal experiences in his popular tale,
"Only a Fiddler;" so is "Gilbert Gurney," a novel by Theodore Hook, a
biography of himself as a practical joker. It will thus be seen that
authors do not always draw entirely upon the imagination for incidents,
characters, and plot, but that there is from first to last a large
amount of actual truth in seeming fiction.

When Goldsmith was a lad of fifteen or there-about, some one gave him a
guinea, with which, and a borrowed horse, he set out for a holiday trip.
He got belated when returning, and, inquiring of a stranger if he would
point out to him a house of entertainment, was mischievously directed to
the residence of the sheriff of the county. Here he knocked lustily at
the door, and sending his horse to the stable, ordered a good supper,
inviting the "landlord" to drink a bottle of wine with him. The next
morning, after an ample breakfast, he offered his guinea in payment,
when the squire, who knew Goldsmith's family, overwhelmed him with
confusion by telling him the truth. Thirty years afterwards Goldsmith
availed himself of this humiliating blunder at the time he wrote that
popular comedy, "She Stoops to Conquer." When Goldsmith was talking to a
friend of writing a fable in which little fishes were to be introduced,
Dr. Johnson, who was present, laughed rather sneeringly. "Why do you
laugh?" asked Goldsmith, angrily. "If you were to write a fable of
little fishes, you would make them speak like whales!" The justice of
the reproof was perfectly apparent to Johnson, who was conscious of
Goldsmith's superior inventiveness, lightness, and grace of composition.

Speaking of authors writing from their own personal experience recalls a
name which we must not neglect to mention. Laurence Sterne, author of
"Tristram Shandy," various volumes of sermons, the "Sentimental
Journey," etc., was a curious compound in character, but possessed of
real genius. He was quite a sentimentalist in his writings, and those
who did not know him personally would accredit him with possessing a
tender heart. The fact was, however, as Horace Walpole said of him, "He
had too much sentiment to have any feeling." His mother, who had run in
debt on account of an extravagant daughter, would have been permitted to
remain indefinitely in jail, but for the kindness of the parents of her
pupils. Her son Laurence heeded her not. "A dead ass was more important
to him than a living mother," says Walpole. Sterne also used his wife
very ill. One day he was talking to Garrick in a fine sentimental manner
in praise of conjugal love and fidelity. "The husband," said Sterne,
"who behaves unkindly to his wife, deserves to have his house burned
over his head." Garrick's reply was only just: "If you think so, I hope
_your_ house is insured." He is known to have been engaged to a Miss
Fourmantel for five years, and then to have jilted her so cruelly that
she ended her days in a mad-house. Such was the great Laurence Sterne.
It was poetical justice that he should repent at leisure of his
subsequent hasty marriage to one whom he had known only four weeks. He
twice visited the lady whom he had deceived, in the establishment where
she was confined; and the character of Maria, whom he so pathetically
describes, is drawn from her, showing how cheaply he could coin his
pretended feelings. Contradictions in character are often ludicrous,
and go to show that the author and the man are seldom one. What can be
more contradictory in the nature of the same individual than Sterne
whining over a dead ass and neglecting to relieve a living mother; or
Prior addressing the most romantic sonnets to his Chloe, and at the same
time indulging a sentimental passion for a barmaid?

Goldsmith's "Deserted Village," according to Mr. Best, an Irish
clergyman, relates to the scenes in which Goldsmith was himself an
actor. Auburn is a poetical name for the village of Lissoy, county of
Westneath. The name of the schoolmaster was Paddy Burns. "I remember him
well," says Mr. Best; "he was indeed a man severe to view. A woman
called Walsey Cruse kept the ale-house. I have often been within it. The
hawthorn bush was remarkably large, and stood in front of the
ale-house." The author of the "Deserted Village," however, made his best
contemporary "hit" with his poem of the "Traveller." He always
distrusted his poetic ability, and this poem was kept on hand some years
after it was completed, before he published it in 1764. It passed
through several editions in the first year, and proved a golden harvest
to Newbury the publisher; but Goldsmith received only twenty guineas for
the manuscript.

The character of Sober, in Johnson's "Idler," is a portrait of himself;
and he admitted more than once that he had his own outset in life in his
mind when he wrote the Eastern story of "Gelaleddin." Is not "Tristram
Shandy" a synonym for its author, Sterne? Hazlitt and many others fuse
the personality of the author of the "Imaginary Conversations" with this
admirable work from his pen: certainly a high compliment to Landor, if
the portraiture is a likeness. Walter Savage Landor[62] was a most
erratic genius, a man of uncontrollable passions which led him into
constant difficulties; at times he must have been partially deranged. In
all his productions he exhibits high literary culture; and being born to
a fortune, he was enabled to adapt himself to his most fastidious
tastes, though in the closing years of his life, having lost his money,
he learned the meaning of that bitter word dependence. The severest
critic must accord him the genius of a poet; but his literar reputation
will rest upon his elaborate prose work, "Imaginary Conversations" of
literary men and statesmen, upon which he was engaged for more than ten
years. He lived to the age of ninety, and found solace in his pen to the
last.




CHAPTER III.


As we have already remarked, authors are very much like other people,
rarely coming up to the idea formed of them by enthusiastic readers.
They are pretty sure to have some idiosyncrasies more or less peculiar;
and who, indeed, has not? To know the true character of these
individuals, we should see them in their homes rather than in their
books.

Having so lately spoken of Landor, we are reminded of another literary
character who in many respects resembled him. William Beckford, the
English author, utterly despised literary fame, and when he wrote he
could afford to do so, for he was a millionnaire. His romance of
"Vathek," as an Eastern tale, was pronounced by the critics superior to
"Rasselas;" and indeed "Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia," is hardly in any
sense an Eastern tale. "Johnson," says Macaulay, "not content with
turning filthy savages, ignorant of their letters and gorged with raw
steaks cut from living cows, into philosophers as eloquent and
enlightened as himself or his friend Burke, and into ladies as
accomplished as Mrs. Lennox or Mrs. Sheridan, transferred the whole
domestic system of England to Egypt." Beckford read to Rogers one of
his novels in which the hero was a Frenchman who was ridiculously fond
of dogs, and in which his own life was clearly depicted. Even this
millionnaire author was finally reduced to such necessity as obliged him
to sell his private pictures for subsistence. The last which he disposed
of was Bellini's portrait of the "Doge of Venice," which was bought for
and hung in the National Gallery on the very day that Beckford died, in
1844.

Certainly those authors who give us their own personal experience as a
basis for their sketches are no plagiarists. The late Wendell
Phillips[63] delighted, in his lecture on the "Lost Arts," to prove that
there was nothing new under the sun; a not uncongenial task for this
"silver-tongued orator," who was an iconoclast by nature. So early as
the age of twenty-five he relinquished the practice of the law because
he was unwilling to act under an oath to the Constitution of the United
States. In one sense there is nothing new under the sun. Genius has not
hesitated to borrow bravely from history and legend. The "Amphitrion" of
Molière was adopted from Plautus, who had borrowed it from the Greeks,
and they from the Indians. Any one reading a collection of the Arabian
stories for the first time will be surprised at meeting so many which
are familiar, and which he had thought to be of modern birth. La
Fontaine borrowed from Petronius the "Ephesian Matron," which had been
taken from Greek annals, having been previously transferred from the
Arabic, where it appeared taken from the Chinese. There is no ignoring
the fact that a large portion of our plots belonged originally to
Eastern nations. The graceful, attractive, and patriotic story of
William Tell was proven by the elder son of Haller, a century ago, to
have been, in the main features, but the revival of a Danish story to be
found in Saxo Grammaticus. The interesting legend of the apple was but a
fable revived. The English story of Whittington and his Cat was common
two thousand years ago in Persia.

When the writer of these pages visited the grand temples of Nikko, in
the interior of Japan, he was told that the wonderfully preserved
carvings beneath the eaves and on the inner walls, thousands of years
old, were executed by one who was known as the "Left-Handed Artist," who
was a dwarf, and had but partial use of the right hand. It seems,
according to the local legend preserved for so many centuries, that
while this artist was working at the ornamentation of the temples at
Nikko he saw and fell in love with a beautiful Japanese girl resident in
the city; for Nikko was then a city of half a million, though now but a
straggling village. The girl would have nothing to do with the artist,
on account of his deformity of person. All his attempts to win her
affection were vain; she was inflexible. Finally the heart-broken
artist returned to Tokio, his native place. Here be carved in wood a
life-size figure of his beloved, so perfect and beautiful that the gods
endowed it with life, and the sculptor lived with it as his wife, in the
enjoyment of mutual love, all the rest of his days. Here, then, in
Japan, we have the legend upon which the Greek story of Pygmalion and
Galatea is undoubtedly founded.

As regards the subject of plagiarism in general, which is so often
spoken of as connected with literary productions, it should be
remembered, as Ruskin says, that all men who have sense and feeling are
being constantly helped. They are taught by every person whom they meet,
and enriched by everything that falls in their way. The greatest is he
who has been oftenest aided.[64] "Literature is full of coincidences,"
says Holmes, "which some love to believe plagiarisms. There are thoughts
always abroad in the air, which it takes more wit to avoid than to hit
upon."

It has been truthfully said that no man is quite sane; each one has a
vein of folly in his composition, a view which would certainly seem to
be illustrated by circumstances which are easily recalled. Take, for
instance, the fact that Schiller[65] could not write unless surrounded
by the scent of decayed apples, with which he kept one drawer of his
writing-desk well filled. Could we have a clearer instance of monomania?
He also required his cup of strong coffee when he was composing, and the
coffee was well "laced" with brandy. Bulwer-Lytton, in his life of
Schiller, declares that when he wrote at night he drank hock wine. As an
opposite and much more agreeable habit, we have that of Méhul, the
French composer, and author of over forty successful operas, who could
not produce a note of original music except amid the perfume of roses.
His table, writing-desk, and piano were constantly covered with them; in
this delicious atmosphere he produced his "Joseph in Egypt," which alone
would have entitled him to undying fame.

Father Sarpi, who was Macaulay's favorite historian, best known as the
author of the "History of the Council of Trent," having the idea that
the atmosphere immediately about him became in a degree impregnated with
the mental electricity of his brain, was accustomed to build a paper
enclosure about his head and person while he was writing. "All air is
predatory," he said. Salieri, the Venetian composer, prepared himself
for writing by filling a capacious dish at his side with candy and
bonbons, which he consumed in large quantities during the process.
Sarti, the well-known composer of sacred music, was obliged to work in
the dark, or thought that he was, as daylight or artificial light of any
sort at such moments utterly disconcerted him. Rossini, on the contrary,
seemed to have no special ideas about his surroundings when he was in a
mood for composing. He sat down among his friends, laughing and talking
all the while that he was creating, and framing with marvellous rapidity
strains that will live for all time. The whole of "Tancredi," which
first made his fame, was produced in the very midst of social life and
merry companionship. He said he found inspiration in the cheerful human
voices about him. As to the peculiarities we have noted in others, they
must at first have been mere affectations; but such is the force of
habit, that no doubt these individuals became confirmed in them and
really believed their indulgence a necessity.

Carneades, the Greek philosopher, so famed for his subtle and powerful
eloquence, before sitting down to write dosed himself with hellebore,--a
strange resort, as it is supposed to act directly upon the liver, and
only very slightly to stimulate the brain, besides being a fatal poison
in large doses. It is well known that Dryden resorted to singular aids
as preparatory to literary composition; being in the habit of first
having himself bled and then making a meal of raw meat. The former
process, he contended, rendered his brain clear, and the latter
stimulated his imagination. In 1668 he held the position now filled by
Tennyson, as poet-laureate of England. He was a notable instance of
power in poetry, satire, and indecency, whom Cowper characterized as a
lewd writer but a chaste companion. Dryden's own couplet will forcibly
apply to himself:--

    "O gracious God! how far have we
    Profaned thy heavenly gift of poesy!"

His "Essay on Dramatic Poesy," according to Dr. Johnson, entitled him to
be considered the father of English criticism. His dramas, such as
"Mariage à-la-Mode," "All for Love," "Don Sebastian," etc., were, by
reason of their indecency, examples of perverted genius. He was
sixty-six years old when he wrote his "Alexander's Feast," by far his
best literary effort. While Macaulay calls him "an illustrious
renegade,"[66] Dr. Johnson says, "he found the English language brick
and left it marble,"--a most superlative and ridiculous comment to be
made by so erudite a critic.

When James Francis Stephens, the English entomologist, was about to
write, he mounted a horse and arranged his thoughts and sentences while
at full gallop. This was a plan that Sir Walter Scott also adopted when
he wrote "Marmion," galloping up and down the shore of the Firth of
Forth. But he concluded that he could do better pen-work in a more
rational manner, so this practice did not become habitual with him.
Scott made an interesting confession when writing the third volume of
"Woodstock." He declared that he had not the slightest idea how the
story was to be wound up to a catastrophe. He said he could never lay
out a plan for a novel and stick to it. "I only tried to make that which
I wrote diverting and interesting, leaving the rest to fate." Sir David
Dalrymple (afterwards Lord Hailes) was a voluminous author on historical
and antiquarian subjects. His "Annals of Scotland," published in 1792,
was his most important work; Dr. Johnson called it "a book which will
always sell, it has such a stability of dates, such a certainty of
facts, and such punctuality of citation." Lord Hailes's mode of writing
was very domestic, so to speak, being performed by the parlor fire, and
amid his family circle of wife and children. He was always ready to
answer any appeal, however trifling, and to enter cheerfully into all
current family affairs. This seems hardly reconcilable with the extreme
nicety and absolute correctness of his work.

Cormontaigne, the French military engineer, wrote an elaborate treatise
on fortification in the trenches and while under fire. The Duke of
Wellington, when his army was at San Christoval awaiting battle with the
French, wrote a complete essay on the purpose of establishing a bank at
Lisbon after the English methods. Thomas Hood wrote at night, when the
house was still and the children asleep. Ouida[67] writes with her dogs
only as companions, while they lie contentedly at her feet in the bright
sunny library whose windows overlook the valley of the Arno and her
well-beloved Florence. In the flower-garden before the villa her
favorite Newfoundland dog, not long since dead, lies buried beneath a
marble monument. Her productive literary capacity is wonderfully rapid,
but the demand far exceeds it, and the prices she receives are
unprecedented. She has few if any intimate friends, and no confidants,
leading a life of almost perfect isolation.

Notwithstanding common-sense and experience have ever taught that the
brain is capable of producing its best work when in its normal
condition, still a host of writers have resorted systematically to some
sort of artificial stimulant to aid them in authorship. History tells
us that Æschylus, Eupolis, Cratinus, and Ennius, in the olden time,
would not attempt to compose until they had become nearly intoxicated
with wine. In more modern times, we know that Shadwell, De Quincey,
Psalmanazar the famous literary impostor, Coleridge, Robert Hall, and
Bishop Horsley stimulated themselves with fabulous doses of opium.
Alfred de Musset, Burns, Edgar A. Poe, Dickens, Christopher North, and a
host of others whose names will only too readily occur to the reader,
were reckless as to the use of alcohol. They were both fed and consumed
by stimulants. We are inclined, however, to forgive much of indiscretion
in a brilliant and ardent imagination. Schiller, so lately referred to,
was addicted to Rhenish wine in large quantities. Blackstone, author of
"Commentaries on the Laws of England," remarkable for his clearness and
purity of style, never wrote without a bottle of port by his side, which
he emptied at a sitting.

It is related of Bacon that he did not drink wine when engaged in
pen-craft, but he was accustomed to have sherry poured into a broad open
vessel, and to inhale its fragrance with great relish. He believed that
his brain thus received the stimulating influence without the narcotic
effect. Sheridan could neither write nor talk until warmed by wine. If
about to make a speech in the House, he would, just before rising,
swallow half a tumbler of raw brandy. Burke presents a remarkable
contrast; his great stimulant being _hot water_. The most impassioned
passages of his speeches had no other physical inspiration; all the rest
came from his glowing soul, which was powerful enough to vitalize his
body for an oration of four hours' length. The food which sustained him
on such occasions was _cold_ mutton, the drink being _hot_ water. Brandy
and port, even claret and champagne, would have driven him wild, though
they were the ordinary stimulants of his contemporaries. Burke was, like
Burns, a man of an excitable temperament; but, unlike Burns, he was wise
enough to avoid all dangerous alcoholic excitements, which increased the
impulsive elements of his nature and diminished the action of his
reason. It will be observed that even in the occasional violence of his
invective, his passion is still reasoned passion, or reason penetrated
by passion, so as to reach the will as well as to convince the
understanding.

Addison, with his bottle of wine at each end of the long gallery at
Holland House, where he walked back and forth perfecting his thoughts,
will be sure to be recalled by the reader in this connection.
Consciously or unconsciously he took a glass of the stimulant at each
turn, until wrought up to the required point. Dr. Radcliffe, the eminent
London physician and author, was often found in an over-stimulated
condition. Summoned one evening to a lady patient, he found that he was
too much inebriated to count her pulse, and so muttered, "Drunk! dead
drunk!" and hastened homeward. The next morning, while experiencing
intense mortification over the recollection, he received a note from the
same patient, in which she said, she knew only too well her own
condition when he called, and begged him to keep the matter secret,
enclosing a hundred-pound note.

Burns was wont oftentimes to compose, as he tells us, "by the lee side
of a bowl of punch, which had overset every mortal in the company except
the haut-boy and the Muse."[68] Of course "the pernicious expedient of
stimulants," as Carlyle would say, only served to use up more rapidly
his already wasted physical strength. Sometimes, however, Burns would
compose walking in the open fields. His first effort was to master some
pleasing air, and then he easily produced appropriate words for it. One
noble trait of Burns's character should not be forgotten. Though he died
in abject poverty, he did not leave a farthing of debt owed to any one.
Nothing could be finer than Carlyle's exordium in his review of
Lockhart's "Life of Burns:" "With our readers in general, with men of
right feeling anywhere, we are not required to plead for Burns. In
pitying admiration he lies enshrined in all our hearts, in a far nobler
mausoleum than that one of marble; neither will his works ever as they
are, pass away from the memory of men. While the Shakspeares and Miltons
roll on like mighty rivers through the country of Thought, bearing
fleets of traffickers and assiduous pearl-fishers on their waves, this
little Valclusa Fountain will also arrest our eye; for this also is of
Nature's own and most cunning workmanship, bursts from the depths of the
earth, with a full gushing current, into the light of day; and often
will the traveller turn aside to drink of its clear waters, and muse
among its rocks and pines."

As we have seen, musical composers, like those devoted to literature,
are apt to have singular fancies. Glück, who was at one time the
music-teacher of Marie Antoinette, and whose operas have entitled him to
a niche in the temple of fame, could compose only while under the
influence of champagne, two bottles of which he would consume at a
sitting. He was an eccentric individual, singing and acting the part for
which he at the same time wrote the music. Handel, when he felt the
inspiration of music upon him, sought the graveyard of some village
church, and on the moss-grown stones laid his portfolio and wrote his
notes, never trying their harmony until he had completed the entire
piece. It seems strange to us, in the light of his great genius, to
think what an immense glutton Handel was. We have already spoken of
this, but recur to it again in this connection; for one is puzzled how
to reconcile the grossness of his appetite with his æsthetic nature. He
could devour more food at one dinner than any other composer in
three.[69] Never before was height and breadth of musical genius
combined with such enormous appetite for the good things of the table;
and yet his digestion was as sound as his love and need of food was
portentous. Everything about this great composer was gigantesque, as
became a giant. His forgetive brain was recruited by the nourishment
drawn from a ravenous yet healthy stomach.

Unlike Handel's mode of composition, Mozart played his music upon the
harpsichord before he wrote a note of it upon paper; but he had a most
exalted idea of his mission, and prepared himself for composition, not
by partaking of a hearty dinner, but by reading favorite classic authors
for hours before beginning what was to him a sacred task. His favorite
authors on such occasions were Dante and Petrarch. He chose the morning
for his compositions; but he would often delay writing his scores for
the musicians until it was too late to copy them, and sometimes failed
altogether to write out the part intended to be performed by himself;
yet when the moment arrived, so perfectly had all been arranged in his
mind, he played it without hesitation, instrument in hand. The Emperor
Joseph, before whom he was performing on one occasion, observed that the
music-sheet before him contained no characters whatever, and asked,
"Where is your part?" "Here," replied Mozart, pointing with his finger
to his forehead.[70] He became blind before he was forty years of age,
but continued to compose. The duet and chorus in "Judas Maccabæus," and
some others of his finest efforts were produced after his total
deprivation of sight; nor did he cease to conduct his oratorios in
public on account of his blindness.

Spontini, the Italian composer, like Sarti, could only produce his music
in the dark, dictating to some one sitting in an adjoining room.
Rossini, author of the "Barber of Seville," composed his music as the
elder Dumas was accustomed to write; namely, in bed. Offenbach, of
opera-bouffe notoriety, almost lived on coffee while creating his dainty
aerial music. The writer of these pages met this composer in Paris in
1873, when he was at the height of his popularity, and was told by him
that he took no wine or spirit until _after_ his work of composition was
completed. Cimarosa, the Italian composer, who won national fame before
he was twenty-five, derived his inspiration from the noisy crowd. Auber,
the French composer, could write only among the green fields and the
silence of the country. Sacchini, another Italian composer, lost the
thread of his inspiration unless attended by his favorrite cats, they
sitting all about him while he worked, some upon the table, some on the
floor, and one always perched contentedly between his shoulders on his
neck; he declared that their purring was to him a soothing anodyne, and
fitted him for composition by making him content. Eugène Sue would not
take up his pen except in full dress and with white kids on his hands.
Thus he produced the "Mysteries of Paris," which Dumas designated as
"one-gross-of-gloves long." Buffon would only sit down to write after
taking a bath and donning pure linen with a full frilled bosom.
Haydn[71] declared that he could not compose unless he wore the large
seal-ring which Frederick the Great had given him. He would sit wrapped
in silence for an hour or more, after which he would seize his pen and
write rapidly without touching a musical instrument; and he rarely
altered a line. In early life, poor, freezing in a miserable garret, he
studied the rudiments of his favorite art by the side of an old broken
harpsichord. For a period of six years he endured a bitter conflict with
poverty, being often compelled for the sake of warmth to lie in bed most
of the day as well as the night. Finally he was relieved from this
thraldom by the generosity of his patron, Prince Esterhazy, a passionate
lover of music, who appointed him his chapel-master, with a salary
sufficient to keep him supplied with the ordinary comforts of life.

Crébillon the elder, a celebrated lyric poet and member of the French
Academy, was enamoured of solitude, and could only write effectively
under such circumstances. His imagination teemed with romances, and he
produced eight or ten dramas which enjoyed popularity in their
day,--about 1776. One day, when he was alone and in a deep reverie, a
friend entered his study hastily. "Don't disturb me," cried the author,
"I am enjoying a moment of happiness: I am going to hang a villain of a
minister, and banish another who is an idiot."

We have lately mentioned Dumas. Hans Christian Andersen, speaking of the
various habits of authors, thus refers to the elder Dumas, with whom he
was intimate: "I generally found him in bed, even long after mid-day,
where he lay, with pen, ink, and paper by his side, and wrote his newest
drama. On entering his apartment I found him thus one day; he nodded
kindly to me, and said: 'Sit down a minute. I have just now a visit from
my Muse; she will be going directly.' He wrote on, and after a brief
silence shouted '_Vivat_' sprang out of bed, and said, 'The third act is
finished!'"[72]

Lamartine was peculiar in his mode of composition, and never saw his
productions, after the first draft, until they were printed, bound, and
issued to the public. He was accustomed to walk forth in his park during
the after part of the day, or of a moonlit evening, with pencil and
pieces of paper, and whatever ideas struck him he recorded. That was the
end of the matter so far as he was concerned. These pieces of paper he
threw into a special box, without a number or title upon them. His
literary secretary with much patient ability assorted these papers,
arranged them as he thought best, and sold them to the publishers at a
royal price. We know of no similar instance where authorship and
recklessness combined have produced creditable results. Certainly such
indifference argued only the presence of weakness and irresponsibility,
which were indeed prominent characteristics of Lamartine.

The remarkable facility with which Goethe's poems were produced is said
to have resembled improvisation, an inspiration almost independent of
his own purposes. "I had come," he says, "to regard the poetic talent
dwelling in me entirely as nature; the rather that I was directed to
look upon external nature as its proper subject. The exercise of this
poetic gift might be stimulated and determined by occasion, but it
flowed forth more joyfully and richly, when it came involuntarily, or
even against my will." Addison, whose style is perhaps the nearest to
perfection in ancient or modern literature, did not reach that standard
without much patient labor. Pope tells us that "he would show his verses
to several friends, and would alter nearly everything that any of them
hinted was wrong. He seemed to be distrustful of himself, and too much
concerned about his character as a poet, or, as he expressed it, 'too
solicitous for that kind of praise which God knows is a very little
matter after all.'" Pope himself published nothing until it had been a
twelvemonth on hand, and even then the printer's proofs were full of
alterations. On one occasion this was carried so far that Dodsley, his
publisher, thought it better to have the whole recomposed than to
attempt to make the necessary alterations. Yet Pope admits that "the
things that I have written fastest have always pleased the most. I wrote
the 'Essay on Criticism' fast, for I had digested all the matter in
prose before I began it in verse."

"I never work better," says Luther, "than when I am inspired by anger:
when I am angry, I can write, pray, and preach well; for then my whole
temperament is quickened, my understanding sharpened, and all mundane
vexations and temptations depart." We are reminded of Burke's remark in
this connection: "A vigorous mind is as necessarily accompanied with
violent passions as a great fire with great heat." Luther, however
ribald he may have been at times, had the zeal of honesty. There was
not a particle of vanity or self-sufficiency in the great reformer. "Do
not call yourselves Lutherans," he said to his followers; "call
yourselves Christians. Who and what is Luther? Has Luther been crucified
for the world?"

Churchill,[73] the English poet and satirist, was so averse to
correcting and blotting his manuscript that many errors were unexpunged,
and many lines which might easily have been improved were neglected.
When expostulated with upon this subject by his publisher, he replied
that erasures were to him like cutting away so much of his flesh; thus
expressing his utter repugnance to an author's most urgent duty. Though
Macaulay tells us that his vices were not so great as his virtues, still
he was dissipated and licentious. Cowper was a great admirer of his
poetry, and called him "the great Churchill." George Wither,[74] the
English poet, satirist, and political writer, was compelled to watch and
fast when he was called upon to write. He "went out of himself," as he
said, at such times, and if he tasted meat or drank one glass of wine he
could not produce a verse or sentence.

Rogers, who wrote purely _con amore_, took all the time to perfect his
work which his fancy dictated, and certainly over-refined many of his
compositions. The "Pleasures of Memory" occupied him seven years. In
writing, composing, re-writing, and altering his "Columbus" and "Human
Life," each required just double that period of time before the
fastidious author felt satisfied to call it finished. Besides this, the
second edition of each went through another series of emendations. The
observant reader will find that Rogers has often weakened his first and
best thoughts by this elaboration. The expression of true genius
oftenest comes, like the lightning, in its full power and effect at the
first flash. "Every event that a man would master," says Holmes, "must
be mounted on the run, and no man ever caught the reins of a thought
except as it galloped by him." One who has had years of active editorial
experience on the daily press can hardly conceive of such fastidious
slowness of composition as characterizes some authors. Sir Joshua
Reynolds, in speaking of Rogers, Rochefoucauld, Cowper, and others, and
their dilatory habits of composition, says, that although men of
ordinary talents may be highly satisfied with their productions, men of
genius never are,--an assumption which is not borne out by facts, as we
shall have occasion to show in these chapters. Modesty is not always the
characteristic of genius; and very few popular writers are without a due
share of vanity in their natures.

Voltaire somewhere says that an author should write with the rapidity
which genius inspires, but should correct with care and deliberation;
which doubtless expresses the process adopted by this unscrupulous but
versatile writer, of whom Carlyle said: "With the single exception of
Luther, there is perhaps, in these modern ages, no other man of a merely
intellectual character, whose influence and reputation have become so
entirely European as that of Voltaire." Sydney Smith was so rapid a
producer that he had not patience even to read over his compositions
when finished. He would throw down his manuscript and say: "There, it is
done; now, Kate, do look it over, and put dots to the _i's_ and strokes
to the _t's_." He was once advised by a fashionable publisher to attempt
a three-volume novel. "Well," said he, after some seeming consideration,
"if I do so, I must have an archdeacon for my hero, to fall in love with
the pew-opener, with the clerk for a confidant; tyrannical interference
of the church-wardens; clandestine correspondence concealed under the
hassock; appeal to the parishioners," etc. He was overflowing with humor
to the very close of life. He wrote to Lady Carlisle during his last
illness, saying, "If you hear of sixteen or eighteen pounds of human
flesh, they belong to _me_. I look as if a curate had been taken out of
me."

Buffon caused his "Époques de la Nature" to be copied eighteen times, so
many corrections and changes were made. As he was then (1778) over
seventy years of age, one would think this an evidence that his mind was
failing him. Pope covered with memoranda every scrap of clear paper
which came in his way. Some of his most elaborate literary work was
begun and finished on the backs of old letters and bits of yellow
wrappers. We do not wonder that such fragmentary manuscript always
suggested the idea of revision and correction. It is difficult to
understand why Pope should have assumed this small virtue of economy and
yet often have been lavish in other directions; indeed, it may be
questioned whether it was intended to be an act of economy. Such petty
parsimony is inexplicable, but certainly it grew into a fixed habit with
him. We believe it was Swift who first called him "paper-saving Pope;"
but Swift was nearly as eccentric a paper-saver as Pope. He wrote to Dr.
Sheridan: "Keep very regular accounts, in large books and a fair hand;
not like me, who, to save paper, confuse everything!" Miss Mitford had
the same habit of writing upon waste scraps of paper, fly-leaves of
books, envelopes, and odd rejected bits, all in so small a hand as to be
nearly illegible. William Hazlitt was also remarkable for the same
practice, and we are told that he even made the first outline of some of
his essays on the walls of his chamber, much to the annoyance of his
landlady.

Some idea of the rapidity with which Byron wrote may be inferred from
the fact that the "Prisoner of Chillon" was written in two days and sent
away complete to the printer. The traveller in Switzerland does not fail
to visit the house--once a wayside inn, at Merges, on the Lake of
Geneva--where Byron wrote this poem while detained by a rainstorm, in
1816. On the heights close at hand is the Castle of Wuffens, dating back
to the tenth century. Morges is a couple of leagues from Lausanne, and
the spot where Gibbon finished his "Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire,"
in 1787. Colton, the philosophical but erratic author of "Lacon," wrote
that entire volume upon covers of letters and such small scraps of paper
as happened to be at hand when a happy thought inspired him. Having
completed a sentence, and rounded it to suit his fancy, he threw it into
a pile with hundreds of others, which were finally turned over to the
printer in a cloth bag. No classification or system of arrangement was
observed. Colton exhibited all the singularities that only too often
characterize genius, especially as regards improvidence and recklessness
of habit. He lived unattended, in a single room in Princes Street, Soho,
London, in a neglected apartment containing scarcely any furniture. He
wrote very illegibly upon a rough deal table with a stumpy pen. He was
finally so pressed with debts that he absconded to avoid his London
creditors, though he held the very comfortable vicarage of Kew, in
Surrey.

Montaigne, the French philosopher and essayist, whose writings have been
translated into every modern tongue, like the musician Sacchini was
marvellously fond of cats, and would not sit down to write without his
favorite by his side. Thomas Moore required complete isolation when he
did literary work, and shut himself up, as did Charles Dickens. He was
a very slow and painstaking producer. Some friend having congratulated
him upon the seeming facility and appropriateness with which a certain
line was introduced into a poem he had just published, Moore replied,
"Facility! that line cost me hours of patient labor to achieve." His
verses, which read so smoothly, and which appear to have glided so
easily from his pen, were the result of infinite labor and patience. His
manuscript, like Tennyson's, was written, amended, rewritten, and
written again, until it was finally satisfactory to his critical ear and
fancy. "Easy writing," said Sheridan, "is commonly damned hard reading."

Bishop Warburton tells us that he could "only write in a hand-to-mouth
style" unless he had all his books about him; and that the blowing of an
east wind, or a fit of the spleen, incapacitated him for literary work;
and still another English bishop could write only when in full
canonicals, a fact which he frankly admitted. Milton would not attempt
to compose except between the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, at which
season his poetry came as if by inspiration, and with scarcely a mental
effort.[75] Thomson, Collins, and Gray entertained very similar ideas,
which when expressed so incensed Dr. Johnson that he publicly ridiculed
them. Crabbe fancied that there was something in the effect of a sudden
fall of snow that in an extraordinary manner stimulated him to poetic
composition; while Lord Orrery found no stimulant equal to a fit of the
gout!--all of which fancies are but mild forms of monomania. James Hogg
(the Ettrick Shepherd) was only too glad to write without any of these
accessories, when he could get any material to write upon. He used to
employ a bit of slate, for want of the necessary paper and ink. The son
of an humble Scottish farmer, he experienced all sorts of misfortunes in
his endeavors to pursue literature as a calling. He was both a prose and
poetic writer of considerable native genius, and formed one of the
well-drawn characters of Christopher North's "Noctes Ambrosianæ." N. P.
Willis in the latter years of his life was accustomed to ride on
horseback before he sat down to write. He believed there was a certain
nervo-vital influence imparted from the robust health and strength of
the animal to the rider, as he once told the writer of these pages; and,
so far as one could judge, the influence upon himself certainly favored
such a conclusion.

Some authors frankly acknowledge that they have not the necessary degree
of patience to apply themselves to the correction of their manuscripts.
Ovid, the popular Roman poet, admitted this. Such people may compose
with pleasure, but there is the end; neither a sense of responsibility
nor a desire for correctness can overcome their constitutional laziness.
Pope, Dryden, Moore, Coleridge, Swift,--in short, nine-tenths of the
popular authors of the past and the present, all change, correct,
amplify, or contract, and interline more or less every page of
manuscript which they produce, and often to such a degree as greatly to
confuse the compositors. Richard Savage, the unfortunate English poet,
could not, or would not, bring himself to correct his faulty sentences,
being greatly indebted to the intelligence of the proof-reader for the
presentable form in which his writings finally appeared. Julius
Scaliger, a celebrated scholar and critic, was, on the other hand, an
example of remarkable correctness, so that his manuscript and the
printer's pages corresponded exactly, page for page and line for line.
Hume,[76] the historian, was never done with his manifold corrections;
his sense of responsibility was unlimited, and his appreciation of his
calling was grand. Fénelon and Gibbon were absolutely correct in their
first efforts; and so was Adam Smith, though he dictated to an
amanuensis.

We are by no means without sympathy for those writers who dread and
avoid the reperusal and correction of their manuscripts. Only those who
are familiar with the detail of book-making can possibly realize its
trying minutiæ. When one has finished the composition and writing of a
chapter, his work is only begun; it must be read and re-read with care,
to be sure of absolute correctness. When once in type, it must be again
carefully read for the correction of printer's errors, and again revised
by second proof; and finally a third proof is necessary, to make sure
that all errors previously marked have been corrected. By this time,
however satisfactory in composition, the text becomes "more tedious than
a twice-told tale." Any author must be singularly conceited who can,
after such experience, take up a chapter or book of his own production
and read it with any great degree of satisfaction. Godeau, Bishop of
Venice, used to say that "to compose is an author's heaven; to correct,
an author's purgatory; but to revise the press, an author's hell!"

Guido Reni, whose superb paintings are among the gems of the Vatican, in
the height of his fame would not touch pencil or brush except in full
dress. He ruined himself by gambling and dissolute habits, and became
lost as to all ambition for that art which had been so grand a mistress
to him in the beginning. He finally arrived at that stage where he lost
at the gaming-table and in riotous living what he earned by contract
under one who managed his affairs, giving him a stipulated sum for just
so much daily work in his studio. Such was the famous author of that
splendid example of art, the "Martyrdom of Saint Peter," in the Vatican.
Parmigiano, the eminent painter, was full of the wildness of genius. He
became mad after the philosopher's stone, jilting art as a mistress,
though his eager creditors forced him to set once more to work, though
to little effect.

Great painters, like great writers, have had their peculiar modes of
producing their effects. Thus Domenichino was accustomed to assume and
enact before the canvas the passion and character he intended to depict
with the brush. While engaged upon the "Martyrdom of Saint Andrew,"
Caracci, a brother painter, came into his studio and found him in a
violent passion. When this fit of abstraction had passed, Caracci
embraced him, admitting that Domenichino had proved himself his master,
and that he had learned from him the true manner of expressing sentiment
or passion upon the canvas.

Richard Wilson, the eminent English landscape-painter, strove in vain,
he said, to paint the motes dancing in the sunshine. A friend coming
into his studio found the artist sitting dejected on the floor, looking
at his last work. The new-comer examined the canvas and remarked
critically that it looked like a broad landscape just after a shower.
Wilson started to his feet in delight, saying, "That is the effect I
intended to represent, but thought I had failed." Poor Wilson possessed
undoubted genius, but neglected his art for brandy, and was himself
neglected in turn. He was one of the original members of the Royal
Academy.

Undoubtedly, genius is at times nonplussed and at fault, like plain
humanity, and is helped out of a temporary dilemma by accident,--as when
Poussin the painter, having lost all patience in his fruitless attempts
to produce a certain result with the brush, impatiently dashed his
sponge against the canvas and brought out thereby the precise effect
desired; namely, the foam on a horse's mouth.

Washington Allston[77] is recalled to us in this connection, one of the
most eminent of our American painters, and a poet of no ordinary
pretensions. "The Sylphs of the Seasons and other Poems" was published
in 1813. He was remarkable for his graphic and animated conversational
powers, and was the warm personal friend of Coleridge and Washington
Irving. Irving says, "His memory I hold in reverence and affection as
one of the purest, noblest, and most intellectual beings that ever
honored me with his friendship." While living in London he was elected
associate of the Royal Academy. Bostonians are familiar with Allston's
half-finished picture of "Belshazzar's Feast," upon which he was engaged
when death snatched him from his work.




CHAPTER IV.


It has been said that the first three men in the world were a gardener,
a ploughman, and a grazier; while all political economists admit that
the real wealth and stamina of a nation must be looked for among the
cultivators of the soil. Was it not Swift who declared that the man who
could make two ears of corn or two blades of grass grow upon a spot of
ground where only one grew before, deserved better of mankind than the
whole race of politicians? Bacon, Cowley, Sir William Temple, Buffon,
and Addison were all attached to horticulture, and more or less time was
devoted by them to the cultivation of trees and plants of various sorts;
nor did they fail to record the refined delight and the profit they
derived therefrom. Daniel Webster was an enthusiastic agriculturist; so
were Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Walter Scott, Horace Greeley,
Gladstone, Evarts,[78] Wilder, Loring, Poore, and a host of other
contemporaneous and noted men. "They who labor in the earth," said
Jefferson, "are the chosen people of God."

But the habits and mode of composition adopted by literary men still
crowd upon the memory. Hobbes, the famous English philosopher, author of
a "Treatise on Human Nature," a political work entitled the "Leviathan,"
etc., was accustomed to compose in the open air. The top of his
walking-stick was supplied with pen and inkhorn, and he would pause
anywhere to record his thoughts in the note-book always carried in his
pocket. Virgil rose early in the morning and wrote at a furious rate
innumerable verses, which he afterwards pruned and altered and polished,
as he said, after the manner of a bear licking her cubs into shape. The
Earl of Roscommon, in his "Essay on Translated Verse," declared this to
be the duty of the poet,--

    "To write with fury and correct with phlegm."

Dr. Darwin, the ingenious English poet, wrote his works, like some
others of whom we have spoken, on scraps of paper with a pencil while
travelling. His old-fashioned sulky was so full of books as to give
barely room for him to sit and to carry a well-stored hamper of fruits
and sweetmeats, of which he was immoderately fond.

Rousseau tells us that he composed in bed at night, or else out of doors
while walking, carefully recording his ideas in his brain, arranging and
turning them many times until they satisfied him, and then he committed
them to paper perfected. He said it was in vain for him to attempt to
compose at a table surrounded by books and all the usual accessories of
an author. Irving wrote most of the "Stout Gentleman" mounted on a stile
at Stratford-on-Avon, while his friend Leslie, the painter, was engaged
in taking sketches of the interesting locality. Jane Taylor, the English
poetess and prose writer, began to produce creditable work at a very
early age, and used at first to compose tales and dramas while whipping
a top, committing them to paper at the close of that somewhat trivial
exercise. As she grew older she said that she could find mental
inspiration only from outdoor exercise.

Petavius, the learned Jesuit, when composing his "Theologica Dogmata"
and other works, would leave his table and pen at the end of every other
hour to twirl his chair, first with one hand, then with the other, for
ten minutes, by way of exercise. Cardinal Richelieu resorted to jumping
in his garden, and in bad weather leaped over the chairs and tables
indoors,--an exercise which seemed to have a special charm for him.
Samuel Clark, the English philosopher and mathematician, adopted
Richelieu's plan of exercise when tired of continuous writing. Pope
says, with regard to exercise, "I, like a poor squirrel, am continually
in motion, indeed, but it is only a cage of three feet: my little
excursions are like those of a shopkeeper, who walks every day a mile or
two before his own door, but minds his business all the while."

We are told that Douglas Jerrold, when engaged in preparing literary
matter, used to walk back and forth before his desk, talking wildly to
himself, occasionally stopping to note down his thoughts. Sometimes he
would burst forth in boisterous laughter when he hit upon a droll idea.
He was always extremely restless, would pass out of the house into the
garden and stroll about, carelessly picking leaves from the trees and
chewing them; then suddenly hastening back to his desk, he recorded any
thoughts or sentences which had formed themselves in his mind. Jerrold
wrote so fine a hand, forming his letters so minutely, that his
manuscript was hardly legible to those not accustomed to it. He was very
fastidious about his writing-desk, permitting nothing upon it except
pen, ink, and paper. Like most persons who habitually resort to
stimulants, he could not be content with a single glass of spirits or
wine, but consumed many, until he was only too often unfitted for mental
labor. Jerrold's wit was of a coarser texture than that of Sheridan,
but, unlike his, it came with spontaneous force; it was always ready,
though it had not the polish which premeditation is able to impart.
Oftentimes his wit was severely sarcastic, but as a rule it was only
genial and mirth-provoking.

It was asked in Jerrold's club, on a certain occasion, what was the best
definition of dogmatism. "There is but one," he instantly replied,--"the
maturity of puppyism." A member remarked one day that the business of a
mutual acquaintance was going to the devil. "All right," said Jerrold;
"then he's sure to get it back again." Another member who was not very
popular with the club, hearing a certain melody spoken of, said, "That
always carries me away when I hear it." "Cannot some one whistle it?"
asked Jerrold. Another member, who was rather given to boasting, said:
"Very singular! I dined at the Marchioness of So-and-so's last week, and
we actually had no fish." "Easily explained," said Jerrold; "no doubt
they had eaten it all upstairs." When Heraud, a somewhat bombastic
versifier, asked him if he had read his "Descent into Hell," Jerrold
instantly replied, "No; I had rather see it." Being asked what was the
idea of Harriet Martineau's rather atheistical book, he answered that it
was plain enough,--"There is no God, and Harriet is his Prophet." This
is even better than the remark of another wit who, when asked what was
the outcome of a meeting before which three of the ablest and most
dogmatic Positivists in England made speeches, replied that the result
arrived at was this: that there were three persons and no God. Jerrold
could not confine himself to any regular system of work, but drove the
quill at such times and only to such purpose as his erratic mood
indicated, jumping from one subject to another like one crossing a brook
upon stepping-stones. This, however, was a habit by no means peculiar to
Douglas Jerrold. There are some ludicrous stories told of him; like that
of his being pursued by a printer's boy about the town, from house to
club, from club to the theatre, and so on, and finally of his being
overtaken, getting into a corner and writing an admirable article with
pencil and paper on the top of his hat.

Agassiz,[79] the great Swiss naturalist, who became an adopted and
honored son of this country, was singularly unmethodical in his habits
of professional labor. If he was suddenly seized with an interest in
some scientific inquiry, he would pursue it at once, putting by all
present work, though it might be that he had just got fairly started in
another direction. "I always like to take advantage," he would say, "of
my productive moods." The rule that we must finish one thing before we
begin another, had no force with him. An individual connected with the
lyceum of a neighboring city called upon Agassiz to induce him to
lecture on a certain occasion, but was courteously informed by the
scientist that he could not comply with the request. "It will be a great
disappointment to our citizens," suggested the caller. "I am sorry for
that," replied Agassiz. "We will cheerfully give you double the usual
price," added the agent, "if you will accommodate us." "Ah, my dear
sir," replied the scientist, with that earnest but genial expression so
natural to his manly features, "I cannot afford to waste time in making
money."

A very similar habit of composition or study possessed Goldsmith,
Coleridge, Wordsworth, Pope, and some others of the poets, who not
infrequently laid by a half-constructed composition for two or three
years, then finally took up the neglected theme, finished and published
it. This unmethodical style of doing things is but one of the many
eccentricities of genius. Scott said he never knew a man of much ability
who could be perfectly regular in his habits, while he had known many a
blockhead who could. Southey and Coleridge were at complete antipodes in
regard to regularity of habits and punctuality: the former did
everything by rule, the latter nothing. Charles Lamb said of Coleridge,
"He left forty thousand treatises on metaphysics and divinity, not one
of them complete." Neither Agassiz, Coleridge, nor any of similar
irregularity in work, is to be imitated in those respects. Had it not
been for Agassiz's far-seeing and vigorous powers,--in short, for his
great genius, he could never have accomplished his remarkable mission.
The deduction which we naturally draw is, that method is a good servant
but a bad master. If genius were to be trammelled by system and order,
it would suffocate. Perhaps Montaigne was nearly right when he thought
that individuals ought sometimes to cross the line of fixed rules, in
order to awaken their vigor and keep them from growing musty.

Coleridge was much addicted to the habit of marginal writing; which,
though sadly wasteful on his own part, was very enriching to those
friends who loaned him from their libraries.[80] Charles Lamb, who was
not inclined to spare book-borrowers as a tribe, had no reflections to
cast upon Coleridge for this habit. The depth, weight, and originality
of his comments as hastily and carelessly penned on the margins of books
were wonderful, and if collected and classified would form several
volumes, not only of captivating interest, but of rare critical value,
as the few which have been brought together abundantly prove. In one
volume which he returned to Lamb is this memorandum: "I shall die soon,
my dear Charles Lamb, and then you will not be vexed that I have
be-scribbled your book. S. T. C., May 2d, 1811." "Elia" valued these
marginal notes beyond price, and said that to lose a volume to Coleridge
carried some sense and meaning with it. These critical notes often
nearly equalled in quantity of matter the original text. In his article
upon the subject, Lamb says, "I counsel thee, shut not thy heart nor thy
library against S. T. C." As we have already said, while this erratic
expenditure of Coleridge's rare literary taste and judgment enriched
others, it in a degree impoverished himself; for had the same time and
thought been expended upon consecutive literary work, it would have
produced volumes of inestimable value to the world at large, and have
proved monumental to their author.

Byron was addicted to marginalizing; and though he could not equal
Coleridge in the profundity of his criticisms, or impart such charming
interest to them, still he was quite original and often piquant. Burns
contented himself with trifling criticisms of approval or disapproval
pencilled in the margin of books, especially poetical ones, which were
nearly all he was in the habit of reading.

Many famous authors and public men have been extravagantly fond of the
rod and line, disciples of that patient and poetical angler, Izaak
Walton. George Herbert, the English poet; Henry Wotton, diplomatist and
author; Dr. Paley, Archdeacon of Carlisle; John Dryden, poet and
dramatist; Sydney Smith, the witty divine; Sir Humphry Davy, the eminent
chemist,--all were devoted anglers.[81] This brief list might be largely
increased. Bulwer-Lytton says: "Though no participator in the joys of
more vehement sport, I have a pleasure that I cannot reconcile to my
abstract notions of the tenderness due to dumb creatures, in the
tranquil cruelty of angling. I can only palliate the wanton
destructiveness of my amusement by trying to assure myself that my
pleasure does not spring from the success of the treachery I practise
towards a poor little fish, but rather from that innocent revelry in the
luxuriance of summer life which only anglers enjoy to the utmost."
Walton puts himself on record in these words: "We may say of angling, as
Dr. Boteler said of strawberries: 'Doubtless God could have made a
better berry, but doubtless God never did;' and so, if I might be judge,
God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than
angling." Sydney Smith declared it to be an occupation fit for a bishop,
and that it need in no way interfere with sermon-making.

Perhaps the best thing said or done in angling is an unpublished
anecdote of the great preacher to the seamen,--the late Father Taylor,
of Boston. He was once lured to try his hand at the rod, and soon
brought up a very little fish that had been tempted by his bait. He took
the small creature carefully from the hook, gazed at it a moment, and
then cast it back into the water, with this advice: "My little friend,
go and tell your mother that you have seen a ghost!"

Dr. Parr, the profound English scholar, was a most inveterate smoker; so
was Charles Lamb,[82] who one day said to his doctor, "I have acquired
this habit by toiling over it, as some men toil after virtue."

Robert Hall, the popular English divine, was very much addicted to
tobacco and other stimulants. A friend who found him in his study
blowing forth clouds of smoke from his lips, said, "There you are, at
your old idol!" "Yes," replied the divine, "burning it." Napoleon could
never abide smoking tobacco; yet observing how much other men seemed to
enjoy it, he tried to acquire the habit, but finally gave it up in
disgust. He, however, took snuff to excess. Sir Walter Scott was very
fond of smoking. Thackeray, like Burns, loved to get away by himself and
enjoy the flavor of a rank tobacco-pipe. Carlyle, like Tennyson, did not
care for a cigar, but kept a pipe in his mouth most of his waking hours.
Bulwer-Lytton was a ceaseless smoker; and there are few if any notable
Germans who have not been addicted to the same indulgence. The nicotine
produced from tobacco is one of the most deadly of all poisons, as has
been proven by some startling experiments in the Paris hospitals.[83]
Thackeray said there was good eating in Scott's novels. Extending the
remark, it might be added that there was good drinking in those of
Dickens, and good smoking in those of Thackeray.

Dean Swift relieved his sombre moods by harnessing his servants with
cords and driving them, school-boy fashion, up and down the stairs and
through the garden of the deanery of St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin.
Dickens was controlled by a nervous activity which made him crave
physical exercise of some sort, and he daily found relief in an eight or
ten mile walk. Thackeray once told the author of these pages that he
preferred to take his exercise driving upon very easy roads. When
Dickens was in this country he was frequently accompanied in his long
walks by the late James T. Fields, who was ever ready to sacrifice
himself to the pleasure of others. Mr. Fields was not partial to extreme
pedestrian exercise, and the author of the "Pickwick Papers" tested his
good-nature to the verge of exhaustion in this respect. Dumas, when not
otherwise engaged, was accustomed to go down into his kitchen, and,
deposing the servants, cook his own dinner; and an excellent cook he
must have been, if one half the stories rife about him be true. Besides,
did he not write an original cook-book, which still stands for good
authority in the cafés of the boulevards?

Dr. Warton, the English critic and author, as represented by
contemporary authority, was noted for a love of vulgar society, which he
daily sought in low tap-rooms and gin-shops, where he joked away the
evening hours. Turner the painter had similar tastes and habits, though
he was of a reserved and unsociable character, and noted for his
parsimony. Shelley, Goldsmith, and Macaulay delighted in the company of
young children. "They are so near to God," said Shelley. "Intercourse
with them freshens and rejuvenates one's soul," wrote Macaulay. "I love
these little people; and it is not a small thing when they, who are so
fresh from God, love us," said Dickens. Children always had a most
tender and humanizing effect upon Douglas Jerrold, no matter what was
his mood. He writes: "A creature undefiled by the taint of the world,
unvexed by its injustice, unwearied by its hollow pleasures; a being
fresh from the source of light, with something of its universal lustre
in it. If childhood be this, how holy the duty to see that in its onward
growth it shall be no other!"

History tells us that Henry of Navarre, who was every inch a king, was
often seen upon his palace floor with two of his children upon his back,
playing elephant and rider. What a peep into the king's heart we get by
this little picture of his domestic life! Where was all the monarch's
pride of State, his kingly dignity? "How hard it is to hide the sparks
of nature!" It is related of Epictetus that he would steal away from his
philosophical associates to pass an hour romping with a group of
children,--"to prattle, to creep, and to play with them." Charles Robert
Maturin, the poet, author of the tragedy of "Bertram," and other
successful dramas, could not endure to have children near him during his
hours of literary composition. At such times he was particularly
sensitive, and pasted a wafer on his forehead as a token to the members
of his family that he was not to be interrupted. He said if he lost the
thread of his ideas even for a moment, they were gone from him
altogether. Sir Walter Scott, on the contrary, was ever ready to lay
down his pen at any moment, to exchange pleasant words with child or
adult, friend or stranger; and it was notorious that children could
always interrupt him with impunity. He declared that their childish
accents made his heart dance with glee. He could not check their
confidence and simplicity, though pressed upon him when his thoughts
were soaring in poetic flights or describing vivid scenes of warfare and
carnage. Scott preserved considerable system, nevertheless, in his
composition and labor. He lay awake, he tells us, for a brief period in
the quiet of the early morning, and arranged carefully in his mind the
work of the coming day. He laid out systematically the subject upon
which he was writing, and resolved in what manner he would treat it.
Thus it was that he could lay down his pen at any moment without
deranging the purpose of the work. He had one axiom to which he
tenaciously adhered, and was often heard to repeat it to his dependants
and friends: "Do whatever is to be done, at once; take the hours of
reflection or recreation after business, and never before it."

Schiller said that children made him half glad and half sorry,--always
inclined to moralize. "Happy child," he exclaims, "the cradle is still
to thee a vast space: become a man, and the boundless world will be too
small for thee." Goethe was ever watchful, loving, and tender with the
young. "Children," he says, "like dogs, have so sharp and fine a scent,
that they detect and hunt out everything." He thought their innocent
delusions should be held sacred. Elihu Burritt, the "Learned
Blacksmith," says that he once congratulated an humble farmer upon
having a fine group of sons. "Yes, they are good boys," was the father's
answer. "I talk to them often, but I do not beat my children,--the world
will beat them by and by, if they live." A fine thought, rudely
expressed.

Shelley's interest in children was connected with his half belief in the
Platonic doctrine of pre-existence. As he was passing over one of the
great London bridges, meditating on the mystery, he saw a poor
working-woman with a child a few months old in her arms. Here was an
opportunity to bring the theory to a decisive test: and in his impulsive
way he took the infant from its astonished mother, and in his shrill
voice began to ask it questions as to the world from which it had so
recently come. The child screamed, the indignant parent called for the
police to rescue her baby from the philosophical kidnapper; and as
Shelley reluctantly delivered the infant to its mother's arms, he
muttered, as he passed on, "How strange it is that these little
creatures should be so provokingly reticent!" Shelley was a child
himself in many respects; in illustration of which the reader has only
to recall the poet's singular amusement of sailing paper boats whenever
he found himself conveniently near a pond. So long as the paper which
he chanced to have about him lasted, he remained riveted to the spot.
First he would use the cover of letters, next letters of little value;
but he could not resist the temptation, finally, of employing for the
purpose the letters of his most valued correspondents. He always carried
a book in his pocket, but the fly-leaves were all consumed in forming
these paper boats and setting them adrift to constitute a miniature
fleet. Once he found himself on the banks of the Serpentine River
without paper of any sort except a ten-pound note. He refrained for a
while; but presently it was rapidly twisted into a boat by his skilful
fingers, and devoted to his boat-sailing purpose without further delay.
Its progress being watched, it was finally picked up on the opposite
shore of the river and returned to the owner for more legitimate use.

Charles Lamb in his quaint way says: "I know that sweet children are the
sweetest things in nature, not even excepting the delicate creatures
which bear them; but the prettier the kind of a thing is, the more
desirable it is that it should be pretty of its kind. One daisy differs
not much from another in glory; but a violet should look and smell the
daintiest."[84]

Good and substantial food is quite as necessary to authors and public
men, as to those who gain their livelihood by laborious physical
employment. Authors are, however, as a rule, rather inclined to free
indulgence at table. There is as much intemperance in eating as in
drinking. Tom Moore, who was the best diner-out of his day, said, by way
of excusing this habit, "In grief, I have always found eating a
wonderful relief." N. P. Willis was quite a gourmand. "There are," he
once wrote, "so few invalids untemptable by those deadly domestic
enemies, sweetmeats, pastry, and gravies, that the usual civilities at a
meal are very like being politely assisted to the grave." It is
certainly better to punish our appetites than to be punished by them.
Dickens and Thackeray were both inclined to free indulgence at the
table, the former being struck with death at a public banquet. Dean
Swift often gave better advice than he was himself inclined to follow.
He says: "Temperance," meaning both in eating and drinking, "is a
necessary virtue to great men, since it is the parent of the mind, which
philosophy allows to be one of the greatest felicities in life."
Macready, the famous English tragedian, would not touch food of any kind
for some hours before making one of his grand dramatic efforts, but
drank freely of strong tea before appearing in public,--a subtle
stimulant in which the late Rufus Choate freely indulged, particularly
before addressing a jury.

Abstinence in diet was a special virtue with Milton. Shelley utterly
despised the pleasures of the table. Walter Scott was an abstemious
eater. Pope was a great epicure, and so was the poet Gay. Speaking of
appetite, Coleridge tells us of a man he once saw at a dinner-table, who
struck him as remarkable for his dignity and wise face. The awful charm
of his manner was not broken until the muffins appeared, and then the
wise one exclaimed, "Them's the jockeys for me!" Dignity is sometimes
very rudely unmasked, and an imposing air is nearly always the cloak of
a fool. Newton lived on the simplest food. "If Aristotle could diet on
acorns," he said, "so can I;" and before sitting down to study he
exercised freely and abstained from food. Dr. George Fordyce, the
eminent Scotch physician, ate but one meal a day, saying that if one
meal in twenty-four hours was enough for a lion, it was sufficient for a
man; but in order not to be like the lion, he drank a bottle of port,
half a pint of brandy, and a pitcher of ale with his one meal. Lamartine
used to pass one day in ten fasting, as he said, to clear both stomach
and brain. Aristo, the stoic philosopher, used to fast for days on
acorns. Thomas Byron, a well-known author, never ate flesh of any sort.
Dryden's favorite dish was a chine of bacon. Charles Lamb was enamoured
of roast pig. He said, "You can no more improve sucking pig than you can
refine a violet!" Keats was a very fastidious eater, but was fond of the
table, especially where there was good wine,[85] and yet he was not
addicted to its intemperate use. Dr. Johnson was greedy over boiled
mutton; and Dr. Rhondelet, the famous writer on fishes, was so fond of
figs that he died from having at one time eaten immoderately of them.
Barrow, one of the greatest of English theologians and mathematicians,
is said to have died of a surfeit of pears,--a fruit of which he was
extravagantly fond.

Gastronomic appetite and reason have been compared to two buckets in a
well; when one is at the top the other is at the bottom. Byron nearly
starved himself to prevent growing gross and uninteresting in physical
aspect. Addison was addicted to port and claret, and was accustomed, as
already spoken of, while meditating a moral or political essay, to pace
up and down the long gallery of Holland House.[86] When a humorous
suggestion occurred to his fertile fancy, he solaced himself with
claret; or fortified himself with a glass of port when a moral sentiment
required to be enforced by an impressive close to a beautifully
constructed sentence.[87] This was after his frigid marriage to the
Dowager Countess of Warwick. On his death-bed he is reported to have
said to her graceless son, "See how a Christian can die!" Probably the
profligate youth, spying his father-in-law as he walked in the gallery,
might have irreverently remarked: "See how a Christian can drink!" But
the truth is that Addison, judged by the habits of his time, should be
considered a moderate drinker. Poe's nerves were so shattered that a
slight amount of wine would intoxicate him into a frenzy of dissipation;
the same amount swallowed by a regular toper would hardly disturb his
brain at all. While Pitt was quite a young man, he was so weakly that
his physician ordered him to drink freely of port wine, and he thus
contracted the habit of depending upon stimulants, and could not do
without them. Lord Greville tells us he has seen him swallow a bottle of
port wine by tumblerfuls before going to the House. This, together with
the habit of late suppers, helped materially to shorten his life.[88]

Goldsmith had a queer fancy for sassafras tea, from which he imagined he
derived an excellent tonic effect. Such a relish had certainly one
element to recommend it,--and that was its harmlessness. Dr. Shaw, the
English naturalist, nearly killed himself by drinking green tea to
excess. Haydn partook immoderately of strong coffee, and kept it brewing
by his side while he composed. Burns lived on whiskey for weeks
together, supplemented by tobacco, which caused Byron to say that he was
"a strange compound of dirt and deity."

Aristippus of old lived up to his own motto; namely, "Good cheer is no
hindrance to a good life." Few men reason about their appetites, but
they give way to them until disease reminds them they are made of mortal
stuff. Even Plutarch used to indulge at times in riotous living, saying,
"You cannot reason with the belly; it has no ears." Addison has pithily
recorded his own ideas of this matter. "When I behold a fashionable
table set out in all its magnificence," he says, "I fancy that I see
gouts and dropsies, fevers and lethargies, with other innumerable
distempers, lying in ambuscade among the dishes. Nature delights in the
most plain and simple diet. Every animal but man keeps to one dish.
Herbs are the food of this species, fish of that, and flesh of a third.
Man falls upon everything that comes in his way; not the smallest fruit
or excrescence of the earth, scarce a berry or a mushroom, can escape
him." It is among the easiest of all things to outsit both our health
and our pleasure at the table. "The pleasures of the palate," said
shrewd old Seneca, "deal with us like Egyptian thieves, who strangle
those whom they embrace."

Thackeray said towards the close of his life, that his physicians warned
him habitually not to do what he habitually did. "They tell me that I
should not drink wine, and somehow I drink wine; that I should not eat
this or that, and, guided by my appetite for this or that, I disregard
the warning."

Eminent men are not unlike the rest of humanity in a desire for some
sort of recreation, and each one finds it after his own natural bent or
fancy. Literature is capable of affording the most rational and lasting
enjoyment to cultured minds, but physical exercise has also its
reasonable demands. The late Victor Emmanuel found recreation only in
hunting, having a number of lodges devoted to this purpose in different
parts of Italy. McMahon, late President of France, was also an ardent
sportsman. William the Conqueror passed all his leisure in the
hunting-field; and President Cleveland hastens with rod and gun to pass
his vacation in the Adirondack region. Henry V. occupied a whole day at
a time upon his one game,--tennis. Cardinal Mazarin, while virtual ruler
of France, used to shut himself up in his library and pass an hour daily
in jumping over the chairs. Louis XVI. had a passion for constructing
intricate locks and keys, many curious specimens of which are still
extant in the Cluny Museum. Charles II. in his leisure hours enjoyed
practical chemistry. John Milton wiled away the long hours of his
blindness, when not engaged in composing and dictating, by playing upon
a cabinet organ; and Chief Justice Saunders was given to the same
recreation. The Duke of Burgundy had a singular fancy for constructing
mechanical traps and surprises in his house and grounds, so that
visitors were liable to encounter practical jokes at every turn.

We might cover pages in enumerating the resorts of notable people in
their instinctive search after necessary recreation from sterner duties.
Man must be doing something in order to be happy; action being quite as
necessary to the health of body and brain as thought. Schiller declared
that he found the greatest happiness of life to consist in the regular
discharge of some mechanical duty. "Cheerfulness," says the shrewd and
practical Dr. Horne, is "the daughter of employment; and I have known a
man come home from a funeral in high spirits, merely because he had the
management of it." It is in our unoccupied moments that discontent
creeps into the mind; busy people have no time to be very miserable.
Amusements are not without a double purpose, and it is only a mistaken
zeal which argues against those that are innocent. "Let the world," says
that wise old philosopher Robert Burton, "have their May-games, wakes,
whatsunales, their dancings and concerts; their puppet-shows, hobby
horses, tabors, bagpipes, balls, barley-breaks, and whatever sports and
recreations please them best, provided they be followed with
discretion."

Sir George Cornewall Lewis, a scholar as well as a statesman, found
delight in a variety of intellectual work. He shirked as well as he
could all invitations to parties, balls, and dinners, and once
despairingly exclaimed, when he was called from his studies to enter
into some form of amusement, "that life was tolerable were it not for
its pleasures."




CHAPTER V.


Leonardo da Vinci, the inspired painter of the "Last Supper" upon the
walls of the time-worn Milan convent,[89] is said to have had a strange
inclination for dirt. One biographer tells us he grovelled in it. Da
Vinci was a great engineer and scientist, as well as artist. The face of
Judas in the group seated at the table carries with it a legend. The
artist entertained a bitter enmity towards a priest of the Cathedral who
had worked him some vital injury, either real or imaginary. His revenge
was clear to him; his enemy's hated features were impressed upon his
mind, and so, a little modified to suit the supposed treacherous
character of the disciple, were made to constitute those of Judas at the
moment when he contemplates the betrayal of his Master. The likeness was
too plain not to be recognized by those who knew of the ill feeling
existing between the artist and priest. The result was that the latter
was virtually banished from the city, as he asked to be, and was
transferred to Rome.

Raphael thought he could paint best under the inspiration of wine, and
therefore used it freely. Some modern critics pretend to discover the
vinous influence in certain exaggerations of style peculiar to his best
pictures. Notwithstanding the number and grandeur of the works which he
left behind him, he died prematurely at the age of thirty-seven. A book
might easily be written upon the peculiarities and habits of artists;
but we continue our desultory gossip.

How often we see the lives and fortunes of individuals contingent upon
seeming chance! Cromwell and Hampden, who were cousins, both took
passage in a vessel that lay in the Thames, bound for this country, in
1637. They were actually on board, when an order of council prohibited
the vessel from sailing. We recall two other instances of a similar
character in the career of Goethe and Robert Burns, each of whom was
once on the eve of sailing for America to seek a foreign home. Locke was
banished from England by force of public opinion, in company with his
friend Lord Ashley, and wrote his well-known "Essay on the Human
Understanding"[90] in a Dutch garret. He finally lived down all
detraction, and was himself a practical example of that self-teaching
which he so strongly advocates in his writings. He possessed a wonderful
memory; so also did Thomas Fuller, who could repeat five hundred
unconnected words after twice hearing them. Coleridge esteemed Fuller,
not only for his wit, originality, and liberality, but as being the most
sensible great man of an age that boasted a galaxy of great men.

Jeremy Taylor, whose birth is shrouded in mystery, though he is said to
be the son of a barber, was a singular compound, in character, of
simplicity and erudition. He was always a child among children, and it
is said that a child could at any time attract his attention. He
encountered many of the sterner vicissitudes of life, being more than
once cast into prison. In the civil war he was a decided adherent of
Charles I., and some have supposed him to have been a natural son of
that monarch. Emerson calls him the Shakespeare of divines. Gibbon, the
distinguished historian, composed while walking back and forth in his
room, completely arranging his ideas in his brain before taking his pen
in hand, which in a degree accounts for the correctness of his
manuscript.[91] Montaigne and Châteaubriand,[92] when disposed to
composition, sought the open fields and unfrequented paths, where,
somewhat like Gibbon, they arranged their matter with great precision
before sitting down to write. Bacon always wrote in a small room,
because, as he believed, it enabled him to concentrate his thoughts.
Franklin wrote and studied with a plate of bread and cheese by his side
to repair mental waste, as he said, and also to economize time. Is there
not a ceaseless interest hanging over the domestic and professional
habits of these famous men of the past?

Congreve, to whom Pope dedicated his Iliad and Dryden submitted his
poems for criticism before giving them to the public, was extremely
popular, witty, and original as a dramatist. Congreve was a slow writer,
and was the father, as it were, of that style of writing which died with
Sheridan. He wrote only a few dramas, but those were incomparable for
the brilliancy of the dialogue; yet the brilliancy was obtained by the
hardest intellectual _work_. According to Macaulay, no English author
except Byron had at so early an age stood so high in the estimation of
his contemporaries. But the licentiousness and general immorality of
the works of Congreve are without excuse.[93] He had not even the paltry
plea of necessity, which might lead him to pander to a vitiated taste in
seeking a market for his wares, as was evidently the case with Fielding.
He was very desirous to pass for a man of fashion, and affectedly
sneered at his own literary productions, declaring them to be produced
simply to while away his idle hours. Vanity seems to have completely
overshadowed any spirit of ambition which may have originally inspired
him. Flattery and royal patronage were the ruin of Congreve so far as
his after fame is concerned. Had he known the wholesome spur of
necessity, his grand powers would have shone with surpassing lustre. He
had the genius, but not the incentive, wherewith to make a great name.
Pope is said, on a certain occasion, to have hinted as much to Congreve,
whom he really reverenced for his ability, and to have incurred his
partial enmity thereby. "Oh that men's ears should be to counsel deaf,"
says Shakespeare, "but not to flattery." The broad inconsistency of
Congreve's dramas is the fact that all his characters are equally
endowed with wit, culture, and genius. Collier, in his review of the
profaneness of the English stage, administered to Congreve a merited
castigation, to which the dramatist attempted to reply, but without
success.

The remarkable vicissitudes which have waited upon the career of men of
genius, and especially of authors, are very noticeable. The earliest
authentic history shows us the same fatality besetting the paths of such
characters as has pursued them to the present day. The student of the
past will recall as examples Seneca and his friend Lucan, who were
honored and famous in the days of Nero. Both of these renowned authors,
when condemned to death, lanced their veins and sung a dying requiem
while the tide of their lives ebbed slowly away. So Socrates drank of
the fatal hemlock, like Sappho and Lucretius, voluntarily seeking death.
"That which is a necessity to him that struggles, is little more than a
choice to him who is willing," says Seneca. Sophocles, the Greek tragic
poet and rival of Æschylus, was brought to trial by his own children as
a lunatic. He composed more than a hundred tragedies, of which seven are
still extant. He also excelled as a musician. Plautus, poet and
dramatist, was at one time a baker's assistant, earning his bread by
grinding corn in a hand-mill. Tasso, Italy's favorite epic poet, became
broken-hearted from unrequited love, and was confined in a mad-house for
years, and, illustrative of the mutability of fortune, was afterwards
brought to Rome to be crowned, like Petrarch, with laurels, but died
before the day of coronation. Euripides, one of the three tragic poets
of Greece, was torn to pieces by dogs; and Hesiod, a still more ancient
poet, fell by the assassin's dagger. In later times there looms up the
name of Galileo, the discoverer and natural philosopher, imprisoned by
the Inquisition for teaching men that the world moved.[94] "Poor
Galileo," said a modern wit, "was too honest; he should have treated
these inquisitors to a champagne supper, and they would have risen from
it with the conviction that the world surely _did_ turn round."
Galileo's greatest affliction, however, was that of becoming totally
blind. Milton, who visited him in prison, tells us he was poor and old.
In a letter which he dictated to a correspondent, Galileo says: "Alas!
your dear friend has become irreparably blind. The heavens, the earth,
this universe, which by wonderful observation I have enlarged a thousand
times past the belief of former ages, are henceforth shrunk into the
narrow space which I myself occupy." Handel also passed the last of his
life in the gloom of blindness; and Beethoven was afflicted with
incurable deafness, which nearly drove him to suicide.[95] It was
perhaps the most trying misfortune possible to one with his special
endowments. Have not these historic characters tested the familiar axiom
that calamity is man's true touchstone?

Dante, the greatest poet between the Augustan and Elizabethan ages, was
expatriated and exiled from wife and children, becoming a
poverty-stricken wanderer. Thus broken in heart and fortune he was
hurried by persecution to his grave. Spenser, who endowed English verse
with the soul of harmony while eking out a life of misery, finally died
in abject poverty. Milton sold "Paradise Lost"[96] for ten pounds. "When
Milton composed that grand poem," says Carlyle, "he was not only poor
but impoverished; he was in darkness, and with dangers compassed round,
he sang his immortal song, and found fit audience, though few." At one
time Milton borrowed fifty pounds of Jonathan Hartop, of Aldborough, who
lived to the remarkable age of one hundred and thirty-eight years, dying
in 1791. He returned the loan at the time agreed upon, but Mr. Hartop,
knowing his straitened circumstances, refused to take the money; the
pride of the poet, however, was equal to his genius, and he sent the
money back a second time with an angry letter, which was found years
afterwards among the papers of the remarkable old man. Corneille, the
French dramatist; Vaugelas, a noted author of the same nationality;
Crabbe, the English poet; Chatterton, the precocious and versatile
genius; Holzmann, the profound Oriental scholar; Cervantes; Camoens,[97]
the pride of Portugal; and Erasmus, the Dutch scholar, who rose to the
leadership of the literature of his day,--all lived more or less
continuously on the verge of starvation. Camoens had a black servant who
had grown old with him. This man, a native of Java, is said to have
saved his master's life in the shipwreck whereby he lost all his fortune
except his poems. In after years, when Camoens became so much reduced as
to be able no longer to support his servant, the faithful retainer
begged in the streets of Lisbon for bread to sustain the one great poet
of Portugal. Le Sage, author of "Gil Blas," was endowed with exquisite
literary taste, but the victim of extreme poverty. De Quincey, the
eminent English author, tells us that he passed much time in London in
the most abject want, living upon precarious charity. Nowhere else can
so vivid a picture of misused genius be found as in the "Confessions of
an English Opium-Eater." De Quincey was noted for his rare
conversational powers, supplemented by a vast and varied stock of
information. He was finally successful in a business point of view, and
was possessed of a noble generosity, as he relieved at a critical moment
the necessities of Coleridge at a cost of five hundred pounds. This was
at a comparatively early period of De Quincey's life. Afterwards he was
himself often in want of a tenth part of the sum. He was a voluminous
writer, though not always publishing under his own name; his collection
of works as issued in this country, edited by J. T. Fields, forms some
twenty volumes. Let us not forget to mention Sydenham, the English
scholar who gave us, among other profound works, the best version of
Plato, and who breathed his last in a London sponging-house. "Genius,"
says Whipple, "may almost be defined as the faculty of acquiring
poverty."

Some writers have contended, and not without reason, that such adversity
was often providential; that without the spur of necessity genius would
rarely accomplish its best, and that distress has often elicited talents
which would otherwise have remained dormant. In speaking of Burns,
Carlyle says: "We question whether for his culture as a poet, poverty
and much suffering were not absolutely advantageous. Great men in
looking back over their lives have testified to that effect. 'I would
not for much,' says Jean Paul, 'that I had been born rich.' And yet Jean
Paul's birth was poor enough, for in another place he adds: 'The
prisoner's allowance is bread and water, and I have often only the
latter.' But the gold that is refined in the hottest furnace comes out
the purest; or, as he has himself expressed it, 'the canary-bird sings
sweetest the longer it has been trained in a darkened cage.'" Horace
emphatically declares, that adversity has the effect of developing
talents which prosperous circumstances would not have elicited. The
hardships endured by many historic persons crowd upon the mind in this
connection. We remember John Bunyan in Bedford jail,[98] writing that
immortal work, "Pilgrim's Progress;" Ben Jonson,[99] the comrade of
Shakespeare; John Seldon, the profound scholar and author; and Jeremy
Taylor, whose "Holy Living and Dying" is only second to "Pilgrim's
Progress,"--all of whom endured the suffering of imprisonment.[100] Nor
must we forget Sir Walter Raleigh, who during his thirteen years of
prison-life produced his incomparable "History of the World."[101]
Lydiat, the subtle scholar to whom Dr. Johnson refers, wrote his
"Annotations on the Parian Chronicles," while confined for debt in the
King's Bench; and Wicquefort's curious work on Ambassadors is dated from
the prison to which he was condemned for life. Voltaire wrote his
"Henriad" while confined in the Bastile; De Foe produced his best works
within the walls of Newgate; and Cervantes gave the world "Don Quixote"
from a prison.[102]

Some of the sweetest love-lyrics extant were written by Charles, Duke
of Orleans, during his captivity of twenty-five years. Baron Trenck
wrote his wonderful book of personal experience during a ten years'
captivity in a subterranean dungeon at Magdeburg,--a book which has been
translated into every modern language. He was released from prison, but
died by the guillotine at Paris in 1794. Silvio Pellico, the Italian
poet and dramatist, who wrote the well-known story of his prison life,
was ten years confined in the fortress of Spielberg, in Moravia. Ponce
de Leon, among the foremost of Spanish poets, as well as the poet
Alonzo de Ereilla, were victims of long and severe incarceration because
they dared to translate the Biblical Songs of Solomon into Spanish.
James Howell, the English author, wrote his "Familiar Letters" in the
Fleet Prison. So popular were they, that he had the pleasure of seeing
ten editions of them published in rapid succession; this was about the
year 1646. William Penn and Roger Williams, both founders of States in
this country, suffered imprisonment. The former wrote his well-known "No
Cross, No Crown" in the Tower of London. Oakley, the great Oriental
scholar, whose remarkable Asiatic researches have rendered his name
famous, wrote his work on the Saracens in jail. Cobbett, the political
satirist, was no stranger to the inside of a prison; and we all remember
Cooper, the English chartist, who made himself famous by his "Prison
Rhymes," written behind the frowning bars. Montgomery suffered the same
chilling influences for daring to make a public plea for freedom of
speech. Theodore Hook, the novelist, delightful miscellaneous writer,
and unrivalled wit, was for a long period imprisoned.[103]

Richard Lovelace, the English poet, was a gallant soldier who spilled
his blood for his king in the civil war and impoverished himself in the
same cause, was imprisoned for political reasons, and died poor and
neglected at the age of forty. He wrote to "Lucasta,"[104] when going to
the wars, that fine and often-quoted couplet:--

    "I could not love thee, dear, so much,
      Loved I not honor more."

Lucasta (_Lux casta_, "pure light"), to whom his verses were dedicated,
was Lady Sacheverell, whom he devotedly loved, but who married another
after having been deceived by the false report that Lovelace had been
killed. He was liberated from prison under Cromwell, but lived a
wretched life thereafter. Leigh Hunt, the most genial of essayists, was
imprisoned for two years, when he was visited by Lamb, Byron, and Moore.
His offence was a libel on the Prince Regent, afterwards George the
Fourth. Madame Guyon wrote the most of her beautiful poems--so greatly
admired by Cowper--while a captive for four years in the Bastile. The
great public library of Paris contains forty octavo volumes of her
writings. Why does not some popular author give us a book upon this
theme, and entitle it "Behind the Prison Bars"? The suggestion is freely
offered, and is perhaps worth considering. Disraeli tells us: "The gate
of the prison has sometimes been the porch of fame."

The reference to Lovelace reminds us that sometimes the female favorites
of poets are selected from rather questionable positions, and certainly
with very questionable taste. Prior poured out his admiration in verses
addressed to Chloe, a fat barmaid; and Bousard addressed poems to
Cassandra, who followed the same refining occupation. Colletet, a French
bard, addressed his lines to his servant-girl, whom he afterwards
married. No doubt that oftenest the poet's mistress has no actual
existence, but, like the sculptor's ideal, is the combined result drawn
from several choice models.

Gilbert Wakefield, the erudite scholar, theologian, and author, suffered
two years' imprisonment for publishing his "Enquiry into the Expediency
of Public and Social Worship." "The sentence passed upon him was most
infamous," says Rogers, who, in company with his sister, visited the
prisoner in Dorchester jail. While incarcerated here, Wakefield wrote
his "Noctes Carcerariæ" ("Prison Nights"). Matthew Prior, the poet,
diplomatist, courtier, and versatile author, was the son of a joiner,
though it is not known exactly where he was born. Chancing to interest
the Earl of Dorset, he was educated at the cost of that liberal
nobleman. He[105] was one of those, as Dr. Johnson said, "that have
burst out from an obscure original to great eminence." Thackeray says of
him, "He loved, he drank, he sang; and he was certainly deemed one of
the brightest lights of Queen Anne's reign." His contempt for pedigree
was very natural, and was wittily expressed in the epitaph which he
wrote for himself:--

    "Nobles and heralds, by your leave,
      Here lies what once was Matthew Prior;
    The son of Adam and of Eve:
      Can Bourbon or Nassau claim higher?"

Schumann, the German musical composer, author of "Paradise and the
Peri," in a fit of mental depression threw himself into the Rhine, but
was rescued. Goethe, Alfieri, Raphael, and George Sand all struggled
against a nearly fatal temptation to end their earthly careers. The last
named declared that at the sight of a body of water or a precipice she
could hardly restrain herself from committing suicide! "Genius bears
within itself a principle of destruction, of death, and of madness,"
says Lamartine. De Quincey, who was never quite sane, was given to queer
habits in connection with his literary work. He was wont to keep his
manuscripts stored in his bath-tub, and carried his money in his
hat.[106] Cowper, after a fruitless attempt to hang himself, became a
religious monomaniac, "hovering in the twilight of reason and the dawn
of insanity."[107] Moore, the gay, vivacious, witty, diner-out, sank
finally into childish imbecility. John Clare, the English peasant poet,
was born in poverty; his early productions accidentally attracted
attention and gained him patrons, but after a brief, irregular, unhappy
career he died in an insane asylum. So also died Charles Fenno Hoffman,
our own popular poet, editor, and novelist, who wrote "Sparkling and
Bright." Cruden, the industrious author and compiler of the Biblical
Concordance, suffered from long fits of insanity; and so did Jeremy
Bentham,[108] though he lived to extreme old age, and died so late as
1832. Congreve said it was the prerogative of great souls to be
wretched; and Jean Paul, that great souls attract sorrows as lofty
mountains do storms. Lenau, the Hungarian lyric poet, died in a
mad-house; in the height of his fame he refused, when invited, to visit
an asylum, saying, "I shall be there soon enough as it is." It would
seem but charitable to attribute fits of insanity to Carlyle, who
pronounced most of his contemporaries "fools and lunatics." His wife
confessed that she felt as if she were keeping a mad-house. Vaugelas
died in such poverty that he bequeathed his body to the surgeons at
Paris for a given sum with which to pay his last board-bill. In his will
he wrote: "As there may still remain creditors unpaid after all that I
have shall be disposed of, it is my last wish that my body should be
sold to the surgeons to the best advantage, and that the purchase-money
should go to discharge those debts which I owe to society, so that if I
could not while living, at least when dead I may be useful." Vaugelas
was called the owl, because he ventured forth only at night, through
fear of his creditors.

Next to the "Newgate Calendar," it has been said, the biography of
authors is the most sickening chapter in the history of man. "Woe be to
the youthful poet who sets out upon his pilgrimage to the temple of fame
with nothing but hope for his viaticum!" wrote Southey, in 1813, to a
young man who had consulted him. "There is the Slough of Despond, and
the Hill of Difficulty, and the Valley of the Shadow of Death upon the
way." Coleridge's exhortation to youthful literati may be summed up in
one sentence: "Never pursue literature as a trade." Béranger's advice
was by no means to be despised. He spoke as one having authority, and he
certainly had experience.[109] "Write if you will," he says, "versify if
you must, sing away if the singing mood is an imperative mood, but on no
account give up your other occupation; let your authorship be a pastime,
not a trade; let it be your avocation, not your vocation." Even the
successful Washington Irving speaks of "the seductive but treacherous
paths of literature." He adds: "There is no life more precarious in its
profits and more fallacious in its enjoyments than that of an author."
But these lines were addressed to his nephew, and must be taken _cum
grano salis_. He had genius, his nephew had not; he never could have
acquired so much money had he, like Halleck, become a clerk,--even the
clerk of Mr. Astor. The truth is, most writers have failed in authorship
because they have not had talent enough to write books that an
intelligent public would buy and read, and because their vagabond habits
deterred them from being employed by merchants and tradesmen as salesmen
and clerks. Real genius now obtains a remuneration always higher than
that of clerks and tradesmen. It is mediocre writers who mourn in our
days; but they should never have taken as a profession a role they were
incompetent to fill. They are like doctors who cannot obtain patients,
and lawyers who cannot attract clients.

But we were considering the past, not the present. Robert Heron, author,
scholar, teacher, who wrote much that will live in literature, died in
hopeless poverty. His "History of Scotland" and his "Universal
Geography" are still among our best books of reference. He says of
himself in a paper written just before he died: "The tenor of my life
has been temperate, laborious, humble, and quiet, and, to the utmost of
my power, beneficent. For these last three months I have been brought to
the very extremity of bodily and pecuniary distress, and I shudder at
the thought of perishing in jail." Yet such was his fate; he died in
Newgate. Thomas Decker, the English author, and collaborator with Ford
and Rowley in the production of popular dramas, died in a debtor's
prison. Christopher Smart, the personal friend of Dr. Johnson, produced
his principal poem while confined in a mad-house. Richard Savage, the
English poet, experienced a life which reads like fiction.[110] The
natural son of an English earl and countess, he was abandoned by his
mother to the care of a nurse who brought him up in ignorance of his
parentage. Before he was thirty years of age he was tried and condemned
for murder; and, though finally pardoned, he died in jail. During a
considerable portion of the time that Savage was engaged upon his
tragedy of "Sir Thomas Overbury," he was without lodgings and often
without meat; nor had he any other convenience for study and composition
than the open fields or the public streets. Having formed his sentences
and speeches in his mind, he would step into a shop, ask for pen and
ink, and write down what he had composed upon such scraps of paper as he
had picked up by chance, often from the street gutters.

Thomas Hood, the famous English humorist, began at first as a clerk in a
store, then became apprentice to an engraver; but his genius soon led
him to seek literary occupation as a regular means of support. He was
endowed with an unlimited fund of wit and comic power. His "Song of the
Shirt" showed that he had also great tenderness and pathos in his
nature. He edited various magazines and weekly papers, and published two
or three humorous books; but his career was far from a success in any
light. His life was occupied in incessant brain-work, aggravated by
ill-health and the many uncertainties of authorship. He finally died
poor in his forty-seventh year, leaving a dependent family.

William Thom was an English poet of genius, but very humbly born. He was
at first a weaver and afterwards a strolling pedler, often only too
glad to obtain a lodging in a country barn. The poor fellow said,
"There's much good sleeping to be had in a hayloft." In one of these
deplorable shelters his only child, who followed him, perished from
hunger and exposure. Thom published so late as 1844 a collection of his
poems entitled, "Rhymes and Recollections of a Hand-Weaver." The volume
was well received, and the author was given a dinner by his London
admirers. He died at the age of fifty-nine in extreme poverty. We find
two admirable poems by him in Sargent's "British and American Poets."

The reader who has perused these pages thus far will doubtless have come
to the conclusion that even talent is not developed as a rule in calm
and sunshine, but that it must encounter the tempest in some form before
the fruit can ripen. Byron, in the third canto of "Childe Harold," thus
gloomily declares the penalties of becoming famous:--

      "He who ascends to mountain-tops shall find
      The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow;
      He who surpasses or subdues mankind
      Must look down on the hate of those below.
      Though high _above_ the sun of glory glow,
      And far _beneath_ the earth and ocean spread,
      _Round_ him are icy rocks, and loudly blow
      Contending tempests on his naked head,
    And thus reward the toils which to those summits led."

Longfellow's idea is true and forcible: "Time has a doomsday book, in
which he is continually recording illustrious names. But as soon as a
new name is written there, an old one disappears. Only a few stand in
illumined characters never to be effaced."

Thackeray's tender and beautiful thoughts upon this subject occur to us
here: "To be rich, to be famous? do these profit a year hence, when
other names sound louder than yours, when you lie hidden away under
ground, along with the idle titles engraven on your coffin? Only true
love lives after you, follows your memory with secret blessings, or
pervades you and intercedes for you. _Non omnis moriar_, if, dying, I
yet live in a tender heart or two; nor am lost and hopeless, living, if
a sainted departed soul still loves and prays for me."




CHAPTER VI.


Our familiar gossip thus far concerning those whose lives by universal
consent, "rising above the deluge of years," bear the impress of genius,
has led us to speak of the hardships and vicissitudes to which they have
so often been subjected. At this sad yet interesting aspect of genius we
will continue to glance, observing, as hitherto, no chronological order,
but discussing the personalities of each character as they are unrolled
before us on the panorama of memory.

Handel, most original of composers, after losing his entire fortune in a
legitimate effort to further the interests of the art he loved so well,
passed the last of his life in the gloom of blindness. His glorious
oratorios were most of them produced under the stress of keen adversity,
loss of fortune, and failing health, quite sufficient to have
discouraged any one not truly inspired.[111] Mozart also labored under
the ban of poverty. He was glad to accept even the position of
chapel-master. It is well known that during the composition of some of
his masterpieces he and his family suffered for bread. The great
composer was so absorbed in music that he was but a child in matters of
business.[112] Whatever may be the true definition of genius,
perseverance and application form no inconsiderable part of it. "It is a
very great error," said Mozart, "to suppose that my art has been easily
acquired. I assure you that there is scarcely any one that has so worked
at the study of composition as I have. You could hardly mention any
famous composer whose writings I have not diligently and repeatedly
studied throughout." A boy came to Mozart wishing to compose something,
and inquiring the way to begin. Mozart told him to wait. "You composed
much earlier," said the youth. "But asked nothing about it," replied the
musician.[113] Willmott says very truly that genius finds its own road
and carries its own lamp.

We have seen that Goldsmith produced some of his finest literary work
under stress of circumstances. "Oh, gods! gods!" he exclaimed to his
friend Bryanton, "here in a garret, writing for bread and expecting to
be dunned for a milk-score!" Like so many other children of genius, he
was careless, extravagant, irregular, always in debt and difficulty, all
which hurried him to his grave. He died at the age of forty-five. When,
on his death-bed, the physician asked him if his mind was at ease, he
answered, "No, it is not!" and these were his last words. In that
exquisite story, the "Vicar of Wakefield,"[114] we have the explanation
of how he supported himself while on his travels. "I had some knowledge
of music," he says, "and now turned what was once my amusement into a
present means of subsistence. Whenever I approached a peasant's house
towards nightfall, I played one of my most merry tunes; and that
procured me not only a lodging, but subsistence for the next day."
Goldsmith's many faults were all on the amiable side, though he was
perhaps a little inclined to find fault with his ill-fortune in good set
phrases. Sometimes we are forced to remember that the misery which can
so readily find relief in words of complaint is not dissimilar to that
love which Thackeray thought quite a bearable malady when finding an
outlet in rhyme and prose. Real suffering and profound sorrow are nearly
always silent in proportion to their depth. It is evanescent afflictions
which most readily find tongue. "To write well," says Madame de Staël,
"we should feel truly; but not, as Corinne did, heartbreakingly." If
Goldsmith did grumble, he had bitter cause. At one time having pawned
everything that would bring money, he resorted to writing ballads at
five shillings apiece, going out secretly in the evening to hear them
sung in the streets. His five shillings were often shared with some
importunate beggar. One day he gave away his bed-clothes to a poor woman
who had none; and then, feeling cold at night, he ripped open his bed
and was found lying up to his chin in the feathers! The very name of
Goldsmith seems to us to ring with a generous tone of unselfishness and
human sympathy. The story is true of his leaving the card-table to
relieve a poor woman whose voice as she sang some ditty in passing on
the street came to his sensitive ear indicating distress. Not a line can
be found in all his productions where he has written severely against
any one, though he was himself the subject of bitter criticism and
literary abuse. He was not a very thorough reader of books, but owed his
ability as a writer more to the keenness of his observation. Nature and
life were the books he studied; which was simply going to the
fountain-head for his information.

Machiavelli, the renowned Italian statesman, philosopher, and
dramatist, whose picturesque history of Florence alone would have
entitled him to fame, was entirely misconstrued by the times in which he
lived, suffering imprisonment, torture, and banishment in the cause of
public liberty. Macaulay says of him: "The name of a man whose genius
has illumined all the dark places of policy, and to whose patriotic
wisdom an oppressed people owed their last chance of emancipation,
passed into a proverb of infamy." The victim of one age often becomes
the idol of the next. Dante,[115] expatriated, and exiled from wife and
children, is not forgotten. The greatest genius between the Augustan and
Elizabethan ages, an accomplished musician, a painter of no mean repute,
and a brilliant scholar, he yet enjoyed no contemporary fame. "The
inventor of the spinning-jenny is pretty sure of his reward in his own
day," says Carlyle; "but the writer of a true poem, like the apostle of
a true religion, is nearly as sure of the contrary." Dante poured out
the deep devotion of his youthful heart at the feet of that Beatrice
whose name he has rendered classic by the genius of his pen, though she
did not live to bless him. His later marriage was ill-assorted and
unhappy. The sublime and unique "Divine Comedy" was not even published
until after its author's death. Now the pilgrim bends with reverence
over the grave whither he was hurried by persecution. How absurd are the
transitions of which human appreciation is capable! Even the cool,
philosophical Carlyle was struck with admiration of the poet's devotion.
He says: "I know not in the world an affection equal to that of Dante.
It is a tenderness, a trembling, longing, pitying love, like the wail of
Æolian harps,--soft, soft, like a child's young heart; one likens it to
the song of angels; it is among the purest utterances of affection,
perhaps the very purest that ever came out of a human soul."

Hard indeed seems to have been the fate of the Italian dramatist and
poet, Bentivoglio, who, after impoverishing himself in acts of charity,
literally selling all and giving the proceeds to the poor, when old and
miserable was refused admission into a hospital which he had himself
founded in his days of prosperity. Kotzebue, the German author and
dramatist, who wrote that remarkable play "The Stranger," was a man
beset with morbid melancholy, causing him to pray for death, which came
at last by a murderous hand.[116] Philip Massinger, the creator of "Sir
Giles Overreach," a dramatic conception almost worthy of Shakespeare,
despite his rare and wondrous powers, was the child of adversity.
Massinger wrote in conjunction with Beaumont and Fletcher, they getting
whatever of credit was earned by the three. In those days, an
established writer for the stage would frequently utilize the brains of
others of less note, calling them to aid in productions which bore only
the employer's name. There seemed to be no sunshine in Massinger's life;
it was all in shadow.[117] Could anything be more pathetic than this
brief entry in the death chronicle of a London parish, under date of
March 20, 1639: "Buried--Philip Massinger--a stranger."

Erasmus, the Dutch scholar and philosopher, defrauded of his patrimony
while an orphan of tender years, devoted himself to learning, and
cheerfully submitted to every deprivation to secure it. While pursuing
his studies in Paris he was clothed in rags, and his form was cadaverous
from want of food. It was at this time that he wrote to a friend, "As
soon as I get any money, I will buy first Greek books and then clothes."
Thus nurtured in the school of adversity, he rose to a proud
distinction; and to him, more than to any other writer, was attributed
the success of the Reformation,--it being expressively remarked that he
laid the egg which Luther hatched. If it be true that an atmosphere of
hardship is necessary to the nurture of genius, then certainly Erasmus
encountered the requisite discipline; but as Dr. Johnson says in his
epigrammatic way, "there is a frightful interval between the seed and
the timber." Death is the dropping of the flower that the fruit may
ripen. Thus fame may follow, but seldom is contemporary; nor does true
genius fail to recognize this. Milton's ambition, to use his own words,
was, "to leave something, so written, to after ages that they should not
willingly let it die;" and Cato said he had rather posterity should
inquire why no statues were erected to him, than why they were.
Motherwell calls fame "a flower upon a dead man's heart." Were it
otherwise, were fame contemporary, it would be but the breath of popular
applause, the shallowest phase of reputation. "I always distrust the
accounts of eminent men by their contemporaries," says Samuel Rogers.
"None of us has any reason to slander Homer or Julius Caesar; but we
find it difficult to divest ourselves of prejudices when we are writing
about persons with whom we have been acquainted."

It is tears which wash the eyes of poor humanity, and enable it to see
the previously invisible land of beauty; it is threshing which separates
the wheat from the chaff; every ripened genius has passed its Gethsemane
hours. "The eternal stars shine out as soon as it is dark enough!" says
Carlyle. Izaak Walton, the delightful biographer and charming
miscellaneous writer, was an humble hosier in London in early life. It
was sorrow caused by the death of his wife and children in the stived
quarters of a poor city tradesman, which led him finally to turn his
back upon the great metropolis and seek a home in the country. What
seemed to him to be "dim funereal tapers," proved to be "heaven's
distant lamps." Influenced by the inspiring surroundings of Nature, he
produced his "Complete Angler;" of which Charles Lamb said, "It might
sweeten a man's temper at any time to read it," and which modern
criticism has pronounced one of the best pastorals in the English
language. Spenser, author of the "Faerie Queene," of whose birth little
is known, died in great destitution, though he was buried near Chaucer
in Westminster Abbey. Of his poetry Campbell says: "He threw the soul of
harmony into our verse, and made it more warmly, tenderly, and
magnificently descriptive than it ever was before, or, with a few
exceptions, it has ever been since." The best critics agree that the
originality and richness of his allegorical personages vie with the
splendor of ancient mythology.

Let us not forget to speak of Schiller in his early indigence and
distress, wanting friends and wanting bread, but yet bravely fighting
the battle of life. The humble cottage is still extant, near Leipsic,
where he wrote the "Song of Joy" in those trying days.[118] We recall
Crabbe, stern poet of life's strivings and hardships, reduced to the
verge of starvation, and only relieved by the noble charity of Edmund
Burke; and Otway, one of the most admirable of English dramatists,
author of "Venice Preserved," choked to death by the crust of bread he
eagerly swallowed when weakened by famine. Butler, the author of
"Hudibras,"[119] died in poverty in a London garret. Santara, the famous
French painter, died neglected and penniless in a pauper hospital.
Andrea del Sarto labored hard and patiently at a tailor's bench to
procu

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