Genius in Sunshine and Shadow

In realizing that genius is apt among its other foibles to be over self-conscious, we should be careful not to confound conceit with vanity, to which it is so nearly allied. The latter makes one sensitive to the opinions of others, while the former renders us self-satisfied. Few have possessed either genius or personal beauty without being conscious of it; though Hazlitt declares that no great man ever thought himself great, – an assertion which the reader will hardly be prepared to indorse. A famous American philosopher was persuaded that vanity was often the source of good to the possessor, and that among other comforts of life, one might consistently thank God for his vanity. Still, when evinced in social intercourse nothing is more derogatory to dignity; one becomes not only his own, but everybody's fool. "Vanity is so anchored in the heart of man," says Pascal, "that a soldier, sutler, cook, and street porter vapor and wish to have their admirers; and philosophers even wish the same."

Concerning localities rendered of special interest by association, Leigh Hunt said: "I can no more pass through Westminster without thinking of Milton, or the Borough without thinking of Chaucer and Shakespeare, or Gray's Inn without calling Bacon to mind, or Bloomsbury Square without Steele and Akenside, than I can prefer bricks and mortar to wit and poetry, or not see a beauty upon it beyond architecture, in the splendor of the recollection. I once had duties to perform which kept me out late at night, and severely taxed my health and spirits. My path lay through a neighborhood in which Dryden lived; and though nothing could be more commonplace, and I used to be tired to the heart and soul of me, I never hesitated to go a little out of the way, purely that I might pass through Gold Street, to give myself the shadow of a pleasant thought." Gibbon was twenty-three years in preparing the material for and in writing his "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire;" that is to say, he began it in 1764, and did not finish it until 1787. He says as he "sat musing amidst the ruins of the capital, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter, the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first occurred to his mind." The writer of these pages has visited the garden and summer-house at Lausanne, overlooking Lake Leman, where Gibbon completed his work, and where he laid down his pen in triumph almost exactly a century since.

James Watt has localized a spot of interest in connection with himself at Glasgow, where first flashed upon him the idea which resulted in the improvement of the steam-engine. Leibnitz recalls the grove near Leipsic where in his youth he first began to meditate and create. So Burns had his favorite walk at Dumfries, secluded, and commanding a view of the distant hills, where he composed, as was his wont, in the open air. He says in a letter to Mr. Thomson, August, 1793, "Autumn is my propitious season. I make more verses in it than all the year else." Luther tells us of the spot, and the very tree, under which he argued with Dr. Staupitz as to whether it was his true vocation to preach. Beethoven wrote to Frau von Streicher, at Baden: "When you visit the ancient ruins, do not forget that Beethoven has often lingered there; when you stray through the silent pine forest, do not forget that Beethoven often wrote poems there, or, as it is termed, 'composed.'" How readily we pardon the conceit that peeps out from the words of the great magician of harmony! Hawthorne writes in his note-book: "If ever I should have a biographer, he ought to make great mention of this chamber in my memoirs; because here my mind and character were formed, and here I sat a long, long time, waiting for the world to know me, and sometimes wondering why it did not know me sooner, or whether it would ever know me at all, – at least until I were in my grave." Scott tells us of the precise spot where at the age of thirteen he first read Percy's "Reliques of Ancient English Poetry," beneath a huge platanus tree, forgetting his dinner in the absorbing interest of the book, whose influence upon the mind of the youth may easily be traced in the future poet and romancer. Cowper, who was not blessed with a particularly good memory with regard to what he was accustomed to read, yet possessed a tenacious one for localities, and therefore used in summer to select certain spots out of doors by pond or hedges where to read his favorite books and chapters. The recalling of these spots brought back, he said, the remembrance of the subjects and chapters read beside them. This was certainly an original and remarkable mode of memorizing ideas. William Ellery Channing localizes the clump of willows, a favorite retreat, where the view of the dignity of human nature first broke upon him, and of which he was ever after such a tenacious advocate. He often resorted hither, and speaks of the place with grateful solemnity. It overlooked the meadows and river west of Boston, with a background formed by the Brookline hills.164 Washington Irving used to point out to visitors the spot, commanding the Hudson River, where he first read the "Lady of the Lake," with a wild-cherry tree over his head. In his old age he writes to a friend: "Come and see me, and I will give you a book and a tree."

As an example of the perseverance of genius under discouraging circumstances, we recall the trying experience of our own great naturalist Audubon, who had stored in a pine box a thousand and more of his drawings for his great work on "The Birds of America," while he pursued his studies. On opening the box, after the lapse of a few months, he found his carefully made illustrations destroyed and converted into a nest for rats. The work of years was irreparably gone to nought. After a brief period of bitter disappointment, he says: "I took up my gun, my note-book, and my pencil, and went forth to the woods as gayly as if nothing had happened. I felt pleased that I might now make better drawings than before; and, ere a period not exceeding three years had elapsed, my portfolio was again filled."165 The destruction of his first thousand drawings was a blessing in disguise, both to science and to its modest disciple, since it confirmed him in the resolve which culminated in producing what Cuvier denominated "the most magnificent monument art had ever erected to ornithology." The destruction of Sir Isaac Newton's papers by his favorite dog, embracing the careful calculations of years of study, will occur to the reader in this connection, as well as the loss of Carlyle's first manuscript copy of the "French Revolution," burned by a maid-of-all-work to kindle the fire. Having no draft or copy of the same, he was compelled to reproduce it as nearly as possible from memory. There is positive pleasure in the original production of a piece of literary work; but the reproduction under such circumstances must have been agonizing.

The history of literature is full of instances wherein its votaries have by patient perseverance finally achieved the much-desired fame which has inspired them to endure deprivation and labor. We affirm this, though at the same time recalling Douglas Jerrold's words, – "How much of what is thought by idle people fame is really sought for as the representative of so many legs of mutton! We may make Fame an angelic creature on the tombs of poets, but how often do bards invoke her as a bouncing landlady!" Pope made his way from obscurity, overcoming by sheer perseverance obstacles that genius hardly ever before encountered. He was not only deformed, as we have said, but he was diseased, "unable to take his own stockings off – a woman nurse with him always." So far as we know it, there was not much to love, or even respect, in his personal character; but we must all admire the wonderful perseverance and genius that enabled him to write what he did. His translation of the Iliad alone was sufficient to give him lasting fame; and it did give him plenty of money, as he received a little over five thousand three hundred pounds from it. How Goldsmith would have scattered that generous sum of money, and how securely Pope hoarded it!

Gifford showed wonderful perseverance and resolve in the right direction, learning to write and to work out mathematical sums on scraps of leather with an awl, for the want of better facilities. This was at his native place, Ashburton in Devonshire, where he sat all day for five years upon a cobbler's bench, earning just enough to support life. But he conquered in the brave struggle with adverse fortune. "The nerve that never relaxes, the eye that never blenches, the thought that never wanders, – these are the masters of victory," says Burke. Gifford finally came to the editorial chair of the "Quarterly Review," where he remained for fifteen years, proving one of the severest critics of his day, as we have had occasion to observe, and regarding authors, according to Southey, as Izaak Walton did worms, slugs, and frogs. "Whatever may have been his talents," says Mr. Whipple, "they were exquisitely unfitted for his position; his literary judgment being contemptible where any sense of beauty was required."

As an example of calm, determined resolve and patience to accomplish an honorable end, we know of nothing more remarkable in connection with authorship or literature than that of Sir Walter Scott's deliberately sitting down to pay off a debt of one hundred and twenty-eight thousand pounds with his pen. Scott considered it a debt of honor, though it was not of his own contracting. Amid the pains and pressure of increasing age he worked on to fulfil this honorable purpose, until in seven years he had paid all but about twenty thousand pounds of this enormous load of debt, when the overwrought brain and body gave out, and he was laid to sleep forever. The great "Wizard of the North" says modestly: "It is with the deepest regret that I recollect in my manhood the opportunities of learning166 which I neglected in my youth; through every part of my literary career I have felt pinched and hampered by my own ignorance, and I would at this moment give half the reputation I have had the good fortune to acquire, if by so doing I could rest the remaining part upon a sound foundation of learning and science."

CHAPTER IX

There seems always to have been a natural attraction in literature which draws from other and less captivating professions. Bryant, Longfellow, and Washington Irving started early in life with the purpose of studying law; so did Bailey the poet, and Prescott the historian, – though each and all abandoned that profession for literature. Beaconsfield served an apprenticeship in an attorney's office in London. Burke, Lockhart, John Wilson, Shirley Brooks, Corneille, Layard, and Buffon began in life as solicitors, but soon drifted into literature. Byron's first poetical efforts were failures; so were those of Bulwer-Lytton and Beaconsfield, both in literature and oratory. "I have begun several times many things, and have succeeded in them at last," said the latter when he was hissed down in the House of Commons. "I shall sit down now, but the time will come when you will hear me." He toiled patiently, until the House laughed with him instead of at him.167 Sheridan broke down completely on the occasion of his first effort at public speaking, but declared that it was in him and should come out. Bulwer-Lytton worked his way upwards by slow degrees, and acquired his later facility only by the greatest assiduity and patient application. He wrote at first very slowly and with great difficulty; but he resolved to overcome his slowness of thought, and he succeeded. He was very systematic in his literary work, and rarely wrote more than three hours each day; that is, from ten o'clock in the morning until one. When regularly engaged, the product of a day in latter years amounted to twenty pages of printed matter, such as appear in the regular editions of his novels. Jean Paul Richter's first efforts as a writer were failures; but he possessed genius and the great element of success, – namely, patience. He fought long and hard to attain a position in literature, supporting himself by small contributions to the press, not all of which were accepted or paid for. "I will succeed in making an honorable living by my pen," he said, "or I will starve in the attempt." His triumph was near at hand.168

It is the overcoming of difficulties by heroic perseverance that in no small degree serves to secure and to fix success. "Every noble work is at first impossible," says Carlyle. "Even in social life it is persistency," says Whipple, "which attracts confidence, more than talents and accomplishments."

Thus it will be seen that the greatest geniuses have not commanded success at the outset, but have finally achieved it by deserving it. Voltaire was one of the most brilliant and popular of dramatists; but when "Mariamne" was brought out, it was played but once. The question of its merit was settled oddly enough. The farce which was given after Voltaire's production was entitled "Mourning." "For the deceased play, I suppose," said one of the critics, in the pit; and this decided the fate of the piece. Again, when the "Semirarmis" of Voltaire was acted for the first time, it was far from receiving all the praise which its author anticipated for it. As he was coming from the theatre, he overtook Piron, a less celebrated but brother dramatist, and asked him his opinion of the piece. "I think," said Piron, "you would be very glad if I had written it!"

Dr. Samuel Parr, whom Macaulay pronounced to be the greatest scholar of his age, was a very hard-working literary genius, sensitive more especially to the tender emotions, so that he would weep like a woman when listening to any affecting story. He was very erratic and imaginative, having a special horror of the east wind, which he believed had both a moral and physical power over him. Sheridan knew this very well, and kept the Doctor a prisoner in the house for a whole fortnight by fixing the weathercock in that direction. The Doctor was not without his share of conceit, founded upon the possession of acknowledged talent and ability. He once said in a miscellaneous assembly, pertinent to the subject before the company: "England has produced three great classical scholars: the first was Bentley, the second was Porson, and the third modesty forbids me to mention."

In glancing through the records of the past no name upon the roll of fame strikes the eye of appreciation more pleasantly than that of Sir Philip Sidney, whose life has been called poetry put in action. He lived amid contemporary applause, and his memory is the admiration of all. The bravest of soldiers, he was also the gentlest of sons, equally illustrious for moral qualities and for intellectual genius, controlled by "that chastity of honor which felt a stain like a wound." No incident in history is more familiar than that of this exhausted warrior resigning the cup of water to a fainting soldier, whose need, he said, was greater than his own. Sidney was one of the brightest ornaments of Queen Elizabeth's court. Lord Brooke, who was his intimate friend, says of him: "Though I lived with him and knew him from a child, yet I never knew him other than a man with such steadiness of mind, lovely and familiar gravity, as carried grace and reverence above greater years. His talk was ever of knowledge, and his very play tended to enrich the mind." His death occurred at the age of thirty-two, from a wound in battle, the result of his self-abnegation. He was in full armor, but seeing the marshal of the camp unprotected, he took off his armor and gave it to him, thus exposing himself to the mortal wound which he received. Fuller says, "He was slain before Zutphen, in a small skirmish which we may sadly term a great battle, considering our heavy loss therein."

Victor Hugo was banished from France for his opposition to the coup d'état. He was ever true to his convictions without counting the cost. "If there is anything grander than Victor Hugo's genius," said Louis Blanc, "it is the use which he has made of it." He affords us an instance of the highest fame and the favor of fortune culminating in ripe old age. When Hugo was but a rising man, he was still looked upon by the elder littérateurs with considerable jealousy. At the time when he was first an aspirant for the honors of the French Academy, and called on M. Royer-Collard to solicit his vote, the sturdy veteran professed entire ignorance of his name. "I am the author of 'Notre Dame de Paris,' 'Marion Delorme,' 'Les Derniers Jours d'un Condamne,' etc." "I never heard of them," said Collard. "Will you do me the honor of accepting a copy of my works?" said Victor Hugo, with perfect urbanity. "I never read new books," was the cutting reply.169 But the time came presently when not to know the author of "Les Misérables" was to argue one's self unknown. When he had reached the age of sixty-three he wrote on a bit of sketching paper accompanying a scene he wished to delineate in the "Toilers of the Sea: " "On the face of this cardboard I have sketched my own destiny, – a steamboat tossed by the tempest in the midst of the monstrous ocean; almost disabled, assaulted by foaming waves, and having nothing left but a bit of smoke which people call glory, which the wind sweeps away, and which constitutes its strength."

Improvidence has ever been a distinctive and a common feature in the lives of men of genius. Sir Thomas Lawrence, the celebrated English portrait-painter, was an illustrious example. Of his natural genius there was ample evidence even in childhood, when at the age of six years he produced in crayon in a very few moments accurate likenesses of eminent persons. At the age of twenty-three he succeeded Sir Joshua Reynolds as first painter to the king. He received a hundred guineas each for his portraits, – head and bust, – and one thousand if full-length, which was a large price for those days; and yet he was always embarrassed for money, and died deeply in debt while president of the Royal Academy.

Thomas Moore was very improvident; and though he realized over thirty thousand pounds from his literary productions, yet his family were obliged to live in the most economical manner, often experiencing serious deprivation of the ordinary comforts of life. "His excellent wife," says Rogers, "contrived to maintain the whole family upon a guinea a week; and he, when in London, thought nothing of throwing away that sum weekly on hackney-coaches and gloves." In order to escape the payment of his just debts, Moore was finally obliged to go to Paris, where, Rogers tells us, he frittered away a thousand pounds a year.170

Lamartine and the elder Dumas are notable examples of gross improvidence, – the first being reduced almost to beggary before his death, and supported solely by the liberal contributions of his admirers, while the latter was much of his life either squandering gold profusely or dodging his honest creditors.

Richard Savage, the unfortunate poet and dramatist, passed his life divided between beggary and extravagance. His undoubted genius and ability as an author attracted the hearty friendship of Johnson and Steele, both of whom made earnest efforts to save him from himself; but dissolute habits had taken too firm a hold of him. It is also honorable to Pope that he was his steady and consistent friend almost to the close of his life. Savage's ill-conceived poem of "The Bastard" was intended to expose the cruelty of his mother, who was responsible in the main for the wreck of his life. He finally died a prisoner for debt in Bristol jail. Undoubtedly Dr. Johnson was right when he said that the miseries which Savage underwent were sometimes the consequence of his faults, and his faults were often the effect of his misfortunes.

The period of which we are writing has been vividly described by Macaulay, from whom we quote: —

"All that is squalid and miserable might now be summed up in the word Poet. That word denoted a creature dressed like a scarecrow, familiar with compters and sponging-houses, and perfectly competent to decide on the comparative merits of the Common Side in the King's Bench prison and of Mount Scoundrel in the Fleet. Even the poorest pitied him; and they well might pity him. For if their condition was equally abject, their aspirings were not equally high, nor their sense of insult equally acute. To lodge in a garret up four pair of stairs, to dine in a cellar among footmen out of place, to translate ten hours a day for the wages of a ditcher, to be hunted by bailiffs from one haunt of beggary and pestilence to another, – from Grub Street to St. George's Field, and from St. George's Field to the alleys behind St. Martin's church, – to sleep on a bulk in June and amidst the ashes of a glass-house in December, to die in a hospital and to be buried in a parish vault, was the fate of more than one writer who, if he had lived thirty years earlier, would have been admitted to the sittings of the Kitcat or the Scriblerus club, would have sat in Parliament, and would have been intrusted with embassies to the High Allies; who, if he had lived in our time, would have found encouragement scarcely less munificent in Albemarle Street or in Paternoster Row.

"As every climate has its peculiar diseases, so every walk of life has its peculiar temptations. The literary character assuredly has always had its share of faults, vanity, jealousy, morbid sensibility. To these faults were now superadded the faults which are commonly found in men whose livelihood is precarious, and whose principles are exposed to the trial of severe distress. All the vices of the gambler and of the beggar were blended with those of the author. The prizes in the wretched lottery of book-making were scarcely less ruinous than the blanks. If good fortune came, it came in such a manner that it was almost certain to be abused. After a month of starvation and despair, a full third night or a well-received dedication filled the pocket of the lean, ragged, unwashed poet with guineas. He hastened to enjoy those luxuries with the images of which his mind had been haunted while he was sleeping amidst the cinders and eating potatoes at the Irish ordinary in Shoe Lane. A week of taverns soon qualified him for another year of night-cellars. Such was the life of Savage, of Boyse, and of a crowd of others. Sometimes blazing in gold-lace hats and waistcoats; sometimes lying in bed because their coats had gone to pieces, or wearing paper cravats because their linen was in pawn; sometimes drinking champagne and Tokay with Betty Careless; sometimes standing at the window of an eating-house in Porridge island, to snuff up the scent of what they could not afford to taste, – they knew luxury; they knew beggary; but they never knew comfort. These men were irreclaimable. They looked on a regular and frugal life with the same aversion which an old gypsy or a Mohawk hunter feels for a stationary abode, and for the restraints and securities of civilized communities."

Notwithstanding Douglas Jerrold received a thousand pounds per annum from "Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper" alone, besides a respectable income from "Punch" and other literary labor, he never had a guinea in his pocket; every penny was forestalled, and he left his family in extreme penury.

Goldsmith, as we have seen, was the most improvident of men, and died owing two thousand pounds; which led Dr. Johnson to say, "Was ever poet so trusted before?" It was at this time that Boswell, who was always a little jealous of Goldsmith's intimacy with Johnson, made some disparaging remarks about the dead poet; whereupon Johnson promptly replied, "Dr. Goldsmith was wild, sir, but he is so no more!" "Cover the good man who has been vanquished," says Thackeray, – "cover his face and pass on!" Some families seem to inherit impecuniosity; Goldsmith came thus rightfully, so to speak, by his weakness in this respect.171

Sheridan, according to Byron, wrote the best comedy, the "School for Scandal;" the best opera, the "Duenna;" the best farce, the "Critic;" and delivered the most famous oration of modern times. With genius and talents which entitled him to the highest station, he yet sank into difficulties, mostly through inexcusable improvidence, outraging every principle of justice and of truth, finally dying in neglect. The reader will be apt to recall the anecdote illustrative of Sheridan's impecuniosity. As he was hacking his face one day with a dull razor, he turned to his son and said, "Tom, if you open any more oysters with my razor, I'll cut you off with a shilling." "Very well, father," was the reply; "but where is the shilling to come from?" Sheridan thought if he had stuck to the law he might have done as well as his friend Erskine; "but," he added, "I had no time for such studies; Mrs. Sheridan and myself were often obliged to keep writing for our daily leg or shoulder of mutton, otherwise we should have had no dinner; yes, it was a joint concern."