Читать книгу Literary Character of Men of Genius - Disraeli Isaac - Страница 45

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Of the irritability of genius.—Genius in society often in a state of suffering.—Equality of temper more prevalent among men of letters.—Of the occupation of making a great name.—Anxieties of the most successful. —Of the inventors.—Writers of learning.—Writers of taste.—Artists.

The modes of life of a man of genius, often tinctured by eccentricity and enthusiasm, maintain an eternal conflict with the monotonous and imitative habits of society, as society is carried on in a great metropolis, where men are necessarily alike, and where, in perpetual intercourse, they shape themselves to one another.

The occupations, the amusements, and the ardour of the man of genius are at discord with the artificial habits of life: in the vortexes of business, or the world of pleasure, crowds of human beings are only treading in one another's steps. The pleasures and the sorrows of this active multitude are not his, while his are not obvious to them; and his favourite occupations strengthen his peculiarities, and increase his sensibility. Genius in society is often in a state of suffering. Professional characters, who are themselves so often literary, yielding to their predominant interests, conform to that assumed urbanity which levels them with ordinary minds; but the man of genius cannot leave himself behind in the cabinet he quits; the train of his thoughts is not stopped at will, and in the range of conversation the habits of his mind will prevail: the poet will sometimes muse till he modulates a verse; the artist is sketching what a moment presents, and a moment changes; the philosophical historian is suddenly absorbed by a new combination of thought, and, placing his hands over his eyes, is thrown back into the Middle Ages. Thus it happens that an excited imagination, a high-toned feeling, a wandering reverie, a restlessness of temper, are perpetually carrying the man of genius out of the processional line of the mere conversationists. Like all solitary beings, he is much too sentient, and prepares for defence even at a random touch or a chance hit. His generalising views take things only in masses, while in his rapid emotions he interrogates, and doubts, and is caustic; in a word, he thinks he converses while he is at his studies. Sometimes, apparently a complacent listener, we are mortified by detecting the absent man: now he appears humbled and spiritless, ruminating over some failure which probably may be only known to himself; and now haughty and hardy for a triumph he has obtained, which yet remains a secret to the world. No man is so apt to indulge the extremes of the most opposite feelings: he is sometimes insolent, and sometimes querulous; now the soul of tenderness and tranquillity—then stung by jealousy, or writhing in aversion! A fever shakes his spirit; a fever which has sometimes generated a disease, and has even produced a slight perturbation of the faculties.[A] In one of those manuscript notes by Lord BYRON on this work, which I have wished to preserve, I find his lordship observing on the feelings of genius, that "the depreciation of the lowest of mankind is more painful than the applause of the highest is pleasing." Such is the confession of genius, and such its liability to hourly pain.

[Footnote A: I have given a history of literary quarrels from personal motives, in "Quarrels of Authors," p. 529. There we find how many controversies, in which the public get involved, have sprung from some sudden squabbles, some neglect of petty civility, some unlucky epithet, or some casual observation dropped without much consideration, which mortified or enraged the genus irritabile; a title which from ancient days has been assigned to every description of authors. The late Dr. WELLS, who had some experience in his intercourse with many literary characters, observed, that "in whatever regards the fruits of their mental labours, this is universally acknowledged to be true. Some of the malevolent passions indeed frequently become in learned men more than ordinarily strong, from want of that restraint upon their excitement which society imposes." A puerile critic has reproached me for having drawn my description entirely from my own fancy:—I have taken it from life! See further symptoms of this disease at the close of the chapter on Self-praise in the present work.]

Once we were nearly receiving from the hand of genius the most curious sketches of the temper, the irascible humours, the delicacy of soul, even to its shadowiness, from the warm sbozzos of BURNS, when he began a diary of the heart—a narrative of characters and events, and a chronology of his emotions. It was natural for such a creature of sensation and passion to project such a regular task, but quite impossible for him to get through it. The paper-book that he conceived would have recorded all these things turns out, therefore, but a very imperfect document. Imperfect as it was, it has been thought proper not to give it entire. Yet there we view a warm original mind, when he first stepped into the polished circles of society, discovering that he could no longer "pour out his bosom, his every thought and floating fancy, his very inmost soul, with unreserved confidence to another, without hazard of losing part of that respect which man deserves from man; or, from the unavoidable imperfections attending human nature, of one day repenting his confidence." This was the first lesson he learned at Edinburgh, and it was as a substitute for such a human being that he bought a paper-book to keep under lock and key: "a security at least equal," says he, "to the bosom of any friend whatever." Let the man of genius pause over the fragments of this "paper-book;"—it will instruct as much as any open confession of a criminal at the moment he is about to suffer. No man was more afflicted with that miserable pride, the infirmity of men of imagination, which is so jealously alive, even among their best friends, as to exact a perpetual acknowledgment of their powers. Our poet, with all his gratitude and veneration for "the noble Glencairn," was "wounded to the soul" because his lordship showed "so much attention, engrossing attention, to the only blockhead at table; the whole company consisted of his lordship, Dunderpate, and myself." This Dunderpate, who dined with Lord Glencairn, might have been a useful citizen, who in some points is of more value than an irritable bard. Burns was equally offended with another patron, who was also a literary brother, Dr. Blair. At the moment, he too appeared to be neglecting the irritable poet "for the mere carcass of greatness, or when his eye measured the difference of their point of elevation; I say to myself, with scarcely any emotion," (he might have added, except a good deal of painful contempt,) "what do I care for him or his pomp either?"—"Dr. Blair's vanity is proverbially known among his acquaintance," adds Burns, at the moment that the solitary haughtiness of his own genius had entirely escaped his self-observation.

This character of genius is not singular. Grimm tells of MARIVAUX, that though a good man, there was something dark and suspicious in his character, which made it difficult to keep on terms with him; the most innocent word would wound him, and he was always inclined to think that there was an intention to mortify him; this disposition made him unhappy, and rendered his acquaintance too painful to endure.

What a moral paradox, but what an unquestionable fact, is the wayward irritability of some of the finest geniuses, which is often weak to effeminacy, and capricious to childishness! while minds of a less delicate texture are not frayed and fretted by casual frictions; and plain sense with a coarser grain, is sufficient to keep down these aberrations of their feelings. How mortifying is the list of—

Fears of the brave and follies of the wise!

Many have been sore and implacable on an allusion to some personal defect—on the obscurity of their birth—on some peculiarity of habit; and have suffered themselves to be governed in life by nervous whims and chimeras, equally fantastic and trivial. This morbid sensibility lurks in the temperament of genius, and the infection is often discovered where it is not always suspected. Cumberland declared that the sensibility of some men of genius is so quick and captious, that you must first consider whom they can be happy with, before you can promise yourself any happiness with them: if you bring uncongenial humours into contact with each other, all the objects of society will be frustrated by inattention to the proper grouping of the guests. Look round on our contemporaries; every day furnishes facts which confirm our principle. Among the vexations of POPE was the libel of "the pictured shape;"[A] and even the robust mind of JOHNSON could not suffer to be exhibited as "blinking Sam."[B] MILTON must have delighted in contemplating his own person; and the engraver not having reached our sublime bard's ideal grace, he has pointed his indignation in four iambics. The praise of a skipping ape raised the feeling of envy in that child of nature and genius, GOLDSMITH. VOITURE, the son of a vintner, like our PRIOR, was so mortified whenever reminded of his original occupation, that it was bitterly said, that wine, which cheered the hearts of all men, sickened the heart of Voiture. AKENSIDE ever considered his lameness as an unsupportable misfortune, for it continually reminded him of the fall of the cleaver from one of his father's blocks. BECCARIA, invited to Paris by the literati, arrived melancholy and silent, and abruptly returned home. At that moment this great man was most miserable from a fit of jealousy: a young female had extinguished all his philosophy. The poet ROUSSEAU was the son of a cobbler; and when his honest parent waited at the door of the theatre to embrace his son on the success of his first piece, genius, whose sensibility is not always virtuous, repulsed the venerable father with insult and contempt. But I will no longer proceed from folly to crime.

[Footnote A: He was represented as an ill-made monkey in the frontispiece to a satire noted in "Quarrels of Authors," p. 286 (last edition).—ED.]

[Footnote B: Johnson was displeased at the portrait Reynolds painted of him which dwelt on his nearsightedness; declaring that "a man's defects should never be painted." The same defect was made the subject of a caricature particularly allusive to critical prejudices in his "Lives of the Poets," in which he is pictured as an owl "blinking at the stars."—ED.]

Those who give so many sensations to others must themselves possess an excess and a variety of feelings. We find, indeed, that they are censured for their extreme irritability; and that happy equality of temper so prevalent among MEN OF LETTERS, and which is conveniently acquired by men of the world, has been usually refused to great mental powers, or to fervid dispositions—authors and artists. The man of wit becomes petulant, the profound thinker morose, and the vivacious ridiculously thoughtless.

When ROUSSEAU once retired to a village, he had to learn to endure its conversation; for this purpose he was compelled to invent an expedient to get rid of his uneasy sensations. "Alone, I have never known ennui, even when perfectly unoccupied: my imagination, filling the void, was sufficient to busy me. It is only the inactive chit-chat of the room, when every one is seated face to face, and only moving their tongues, which I never could support. There to be a fixture, nailed with one hand on the other, to settle the state of the weather, or watch the flies about one, or, what is worse, to be bandying compliments, this to me is not bearable." He hit on the expedient of making lace-strings, carrying his working cushion in his visits, to keep the peace with the country gossips.

Is the occupation of making a great name less anxious and precarious than that of making a great fortune? the progress of a man's capital is unequivocal to him, but that of the fame of authors and artists is for the greater part of their lives of an ambiguous nature. They become whatever the minds or knowledge of others make them; they are the creatures of the prejudices and the predispositions of others, and must suffer from those precipitate judgments which are the result of such prejudices and such predispositions. Time only is the certain friend of literary worth, for time makes the world disagree among themselves; and when those who condemn discover that there are others who approve, the weaker party loses itself in the stronger, and at length they learn that the author was far more reasonable than their prejudices had allowed them to conceive. It is thus, however, that the regard which men of genius find in one place they lose in another. We may often smile at the local gradations of genius; the fervid esteem in which an author is held here, and the cold indifference, if not contempt, he encounters in another place; here the man of learning is condemned as a heavy drone, and there the man of wit annoys the unwitty listener.

And are not the anxieties of even the most successful men of genius renewed at every work—often quitted in despair, often returned to with rapture? the same agitation of the spirits, the same poignant delight, the same weariness, the same dissatisfaction, the same querulous languishment after excellence? Is the man of genius an INVENTOR? the discovery is contested, or it is not comprehended for ten years after, perhaps not during his whole life; even men of science are as children before him. Sir Thomas Bodley wrote to Lord Bacon, remonstrating with him on his new mode of philosophising. It seems the fate of all originality of thinking to be immediately opposed; a contemporary is not prepared for its comprehension, and too often cautiously avoids it, from the prudential motive which turns away from a new and solitary path. BACON was not at all understood at home in his own day; his reputation—for it was not celebrity—was confined to his history of Henry VII., and his Essays; it was long after his death before English writers ventured to quote Bacon as an authority; and with equal simplicity and grandeur, BACON called himself "the servant of posterity." MONTESQUIEU gave his Esprit des Loix to be read by that man in France, whom he conceived to be the best judge, and in return received the most mortifying remarks. The great philosopher exclaimed in despair, "I see my own age is not ripe enough to understand my work; however, it shall be published!" When KEPLER published the first rational work on comets, it was condemned, even by the learned, as a wild dream. COPERNICUS so much dreaded the prejudice of mankind against his treatise on "The Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies," that, by a species of continence of all others most difficult to a philosopher, says Adam Smith, he detained it in his closet for thirty years together. LINNÆUS once in despair abandoned his beloved studies, from a too irritable feeling of the ridicule in which, as it appeared to him, a professor Siegesbeck had involved his famous system. Penury, neglect, and labour LINNÆUS could endure, but that his botany should become the object of ridicule for all Stockholm, shook the nerves of this great inventor in his science. Let him speak for himself. "No one cared how many sleepless nights and toilsome hours I had passed, while all with one voice declared, that Siegesbeck had annihilated me. I took my leave of Flora, who bestows on me nothing but Siegesbecks; and condemned my too numerous observations a thousand times over to eternal oblivion. What a fool have I been to waste so much time, to spend my days in a study which yields no better fruit, and makes me the laughing stock of the world." Such are the cries of the irritability of genius, and such are often the causes. The world was in danger of losing a new science, had not LINNÆUS returned to the discoveries which he had forsaken in the madness of the mind! The great SYDENHAM, who, like our HARVEY and our HUNTER, effected a revolution in the science of medicine, and led on alone by the independence of his genius, attacked the most prevailing prejudices, so highly provoked the malignant emulation of his rivals, that a conspiracy was raised against the father of our modern practice to banish him out of the college, as "guilty of medical heresy." JOHN HUNTER was a great discoverer in his own science; but one who well knew him has told us, that few of his contemporaries perceived the ultimate object of his pursuits; and his strong and solitary genius laboured to perfect his designs without the solace of sympathy, without one cheering approbation. "We bees do not provide honey for ourselves," exclaimed VAN HELMONT, when worn out by the toils of chemistry, and still contemplating, amidst tribulation and persecution, and approaching death, his "Tree of Life," which he imagined he had discovered in the cedar. But with a sublime melancholy his spirit breaks out; "My mind breathes some unheard-of thing within; though I, as unprofitable for this life, shall be buried!" Such were the mighty but indistinct anticipations of this visionary inventor, the father of modern chemistry!

I cannot quit this short record of the fates of the inventors in science, without adverting to another cause of that irritability of genius which is so closely connected with their pursuits. If we look into the history of theories, we shall be surprised at the vast number which have "not left a rack behind." And do we suppose that the inventors themselves were not at times alarmed by secret doubts of their soundness and stability? They felt, too often for their repose, that the noble architecture which they had raised might be built on moveable sands, and be found only in the dust of libraries; a cloudy day, or a fit of indigestion, would deprive an inventor of his theory all at once; and as one of them said, "after dinner, all that I have written in the morning appears to me dark, incongruous, nonsensical." At such moments we should find this man of genius in no pleasant mood. The true cause of this nervous state cannot, nay, must not, be confided to the world: the honour of his darling theory will always be dearer to his pride than the confession of even slight doubts which may shake its truth. It is a curious fact which we have but recently discovered, that ROUSSEAU was disturbed by a terror he experienced, and which we well know was not unfounded, that his theories of education were false and absurd. He could not endure to read a page in his own "Emile"[A] without disgust after the work had been published! He acknowledged that there were more suffrages against his notions than for them. "I am not displeased," says he, "with myself on the style and eloquence, but I still dread that my writings are good for nothing at the bottom, and that all my theories are full of extravagance." [Je crains toujours que je pèche par le fond, et que tous mes systèmes ne sont que des extravagances.] HARTLEY with his "Vibrations and Vibrationeles," LEIBNITZ with his "Monads," CUDWORTH with his "Plastic Natures," MALEBRANCHE with his paradoxical doctrine of "Seeing all things in God," and BURNET with his heretical "Theory of the Earth," must unquestionably at times have betrayed an irritability which those about them may have attributed to temper, rather than to genius.

[Footnote A: In a letter by Hume to Blair, written in 1766, apparently first published in the Literary Gazette, Nov. 17, 1821.]

Is our man of genius—not the victim of fancy, but the slave of truth—a learned author? Of the living waters of human knowledge it cannot be said that "If a man drink thereof, he shall never thirst again." What volumes remain to open! what manuscript but makes his heart palpitate! There is no term in researches which new facts may not alter, and a single date may not dissolve. Truth! thou fascinating, but severe mistress, thy adorers are often broken down in thy servitude, performing a thousand unregarded task-works! Now winding thee through thy labyrinth with a single thread, often unravelling—now feeling their way in darkness, doubtful if it be thyself they are touching. How much of the real labour of genius and erudition must remain concealed from the world, and never be reached by their penetration! MONTESQUIEU has described this feeling after its agony: "I thought I should have killed myself these three months to finish a morceau (for his great work), which I wished to insert, on the origin and revolutions of the civil laws in France. You will read it in three hours; but I do assure you that it cost me so much labour that it has whitened my hair." Mr. Hallam, stopping to admire the genius of GIBBON, exclaims, "In this, as in many other places, the masterly boldness and precision of his outline, which astonish those who have trodden parts of the same field, is apt to escape an uninformed reader." Thrice has my learned friend, SHARON TURNER, recomposed, with renewed researches, the history of our ancestors, of which Milton and Hume had despaired—thrice, amidst the self-contests of ill-health and professional duties!

The man of erudition in closing his elaborate work is still exposed to the fatal omissions of wearied vigilance, or the accidental knowledge of some inferior mind, and always to the reigning taste, whatever it chance to be, of the public. Burnet criticised VARILLAS unsparingly;[A] but when he wrote history himself, Harmer's "Specimen of Errors in Burnet's History," returned Burnet the pangs which he had inflicted on another. NEWTON'S favourite work was his "Chronology," which he had written over fifteen times, yet he desisted from its publication during his life-time, from the ill-usage of which he complained. Even the "Optics" of Newton had no character at home till noticed in France. The calm temper of our great philosopher was of so fearful a nature in regard to criticism, that Whiston declares that he would not publish his attack on the "Chronology," lest it might have killed our philosopher; and thus Bishop STILLINGFLEET'S end was hastened by LOCKE's confutation of his metaphysics. The feelings of Sir JOHN MARSHAM could hardly be less irritable when he found his great work tainted by an accusation that it was not friendly to revelation.[B] When the learned POCOCK published a specimen of his translation of Abulpharagias, an Arabian historian, in 1649, it excited great interest; but in 1663, when he gave the world the complete version, it met with no encouragement: in the course of those thirteen years, the genius of the times had changed, and Oriental studies were no longer in request.

[Footnote A: For an account of this work, and Burnet's exposé of it, see "Curiosities of Literature," vol. i. p. 132.—ED.]

[Footnote B: This great work the Canon Chronicus, was published in 1672, and was the first attempt to make the Egyptian chronology clear and intelligible, and to reconcile the whole to the Scripture chronology; a labour he had commenced in Diatriba Chronologica, published in 1649. —ED.]

The great VERULAM profoundly felt the retardment of his fame; for he has pathetically expressed this sentiment in his testament, where he bequeaths his name to posterity, AFTER SOME GENERATIONS SHALL BE past. BRUCE sunk into his grave defrauded of that just fame which his pride and vivacity perhaps too keenly prized, at least for his happiness, and which he authoritatively exacted from an unwilling public. Mortified and indignant at the reception of his great labour by the cold-hearted scepticism of little minds, and the maliciousness of idling wits, he, whose fortitude had toiled through a life of difficulty and danger, could not endure the laugh and scorn of public opinion; for BRUCE there was a simoon more dreadful than the Arabian, and from which genius cannot hide its head. Yet BRUCE only met with the fate which MARCO POLO had before encountered; whose faithful narrative had been contemned by his contemporaries, and who was long thrown aside among legendary writers.[A]

[Footnote A: His stories of the wealth and population of China, which he described as consisting of millions obtained for him the nickname of Marco Milione among the Venetians and other small Italian states, who were unable to comprehend the greatness of his truthful narratives of Eastern travel. Upon his death-bed he was adjured by his friends to retract his statements, which he indignantly refused. It was long after ere his truthfulness was established by other travellers; the Venetian populace gave his house the name La Corte di Milioni: and a vulgar caricature of the great traveller was always introduced in their carnivals, who was termed Marco Milione; and delighted them with the most absurd stories, in, which everything was computed by millions.—ED.]

HARVEY, though his life was prolonged to his eightieth year, hardly lived to see his great discovery of the circulation of the blood established: no physician adopted it; and when at length it was received, one party attempted to rob Harvey of the honour of the discovery, while another asserted that it was so obvious, that they could only express their astonishment that it had ever escaped observation. Incredulity and envy are the evil spirits which have often dogged great inventors to their tomb, and there only have vanished.—But I seem writing the "calamities of authors," and have only begun the catalogue.

The reputation of a writer of taste is subject to more difficulties than any other. Similar was the fate of the finest ode-writers in our poetry. On their publication, the odes of COLLINS could find no readers; and those of GRAY, though ushered into the reading world by the fashionable press of Walpole, were condemned as failures. When RACINE produced his "Athalie," it was not at all relished: Boileau indeed declared that he understood these matters better than the public, and prophesied that the public would return to it: they did so; but it was sixty years afterwards; and Racine died without suspecting that "Athalie" was his masterpiece. I have heard one of our great poets regret that he had devoted so much of his life to the cultivation of his art, which arose from a project made in the golden vision of his youth: "at a time," said he, "when I thought that the fountain could never be dried up."—"Your baggage will reach posterity," was observed.—"There is much to spare," was the answer.

Every day we may observe, of a work of genius, that those parts which have all the raciness of the soil, and as such are most liked by its admirers, are those which are the most criticised. Modest critics shelter themselves under that general amnesty too freely granted, that tastes are allowed to differ; but we should approximate much nearer to the truth, if we were to say, that but few of mankind are prepared to relish the beautiful with that enlarged taste which comprehends all the forms of feeling which genius may assume; forms which may be necessarily associated with defects. A man of genius composes in a state of intellectual emotion, and the magic of his style consists in the movements of his soul; but the art of conveying those movements is far separated from the feeling which inspires them. The idea in the mind is not always found under the pen, any more than the artist's conception can always breathe in his pencil. Like FIAMINGO'S image, which he kept polishing till his friend exclaimed, "What perfection would you have?"—"Alas!" exclaimed the sculptor, "the original I am labouring to come up to is in my head, but not yet in my hand."

The writer toils, and repeatedly toils, to throw into our minds that sympathy with which we hang over the illusion of his pages, and become himself. ARIOSTO wrote sixteen different ways the celebrated stanza descriptive of a tempest, as appears by his MSS. at Ferrara; and the version he preferred was the last of the sixteen. We know that PETRARCH made forty-four alterations of a single verse: "whether for the thought, the expression, or the harmony, it is evident that as many operations in the heart, the head, or the ear of the poet occurred," observes a man of genius, Ugo Foscolo. Quintilian and Horace dread the over-fondness of an author for his compositions: alteration is not always improvement. A picture over-finished fails in its effect. If the hand of the artist cannot leave it, how much beauty may it undo! yet still he is lingering, still strengthening the weak, still subduing the daring, still searching for that single idea which awakens so many in the minds of others, while often, as it once happened, the dash of despair hangs the foam on the horse's nostrils. I have known a great sculptor, who for twenty years delighted himself with forming in his mind the nymph his hand was always creating. How rapturously he beheld her! what inspiration! what illusion! Alas! the last five years spoiled the beautiful which he had once reached, and could not stop and finish!