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 goingto 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 houseto 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 toGod," 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 threadof 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 longas 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 theirlivelihood 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 agreat 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 wasnot 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 saidto 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 onefinds 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 beingquite 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 bythose 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 Dutchgarret. 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 intellectualwork. 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 generalimmorality 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 surelydidturn 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 abusiness 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."
"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 knownexactly 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?"
"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 waswont 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 lateas 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 ofthe 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 takencum 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 hismother 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 andafterwards 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 findThe loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow;He who surpasses or subdues mankindMust look down on the hate of those below.Though highabovethe sun of glory glow,And farbeneaththe earth and ocean spread,Roundhim are icy rocks, and loudly blowContending tempests on his naked head,And thus reward the toils which to those summits led."
"He who ascends to mountain-tops shall findThe loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow;He who surpasses or subdues mankindMust look down on the hate of those below.Though highabovethe sun of glory glow,And farbeneaththe earth and ocean spread,Roundhim are icy rocks, and loudly blowContending 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 iswritten 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 thecomposition 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. IzaakWalton, 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]Werecall 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 procure the means of pursuing art; and Benvenuto Cellini[120]languished in the dungeons of San Angelo.