Chapter 5

In contradistinction to these, Whittier, the Quaker poet, wrote recently to a correspondent in that gentle, modest manner which is so characteristic of everything relating to him: "I have never thought of myself as a poet in the sense in which we use the word when we speak of the great poets. I have just said from time to time the things I had to say, andit has been a series of surprises to me that people should pay so much attention to them, and remember them so long." Voltaire betrayed his conceit when he attempted to criticise Shakespeare. Balzac and Victor Hugo were two egotists. "There are only three writers of the French language," said Balzac,—"Victor Hugo, Théophile Gautier, and myself." Southey, Young, Pope, Dryden, and Wordsworth betrayed their vanity in an egregious manner. Goldsmith was conspicuously vain at times. Landor had a supreme estimate of his own productions, and wrote to Wordsworth, concerning his "Imaginary Conversations," as follows: "In two thousand years there have not been five volumes in prose equal in their contents to these."[160]Voltaire's remark upon Dante served only to illustrate his own spleen and jealousy. "His reputation," said the sarcastic Frenchman, "will continually be growing greater, because there is now nobody who reads him." As for Voltaire's tragedies, De Tocqueville said he could not even read them through, and he doubted if anybody else could. Scott said he read the "Henriade" through, andlived, but it was when he was a young man, and thenhe read everything. Dr. Johnson once acknowledged that he never read Milton through until he was obliged to do so in compiling his dictionary. Southey said he had read Spenser through aboutthirtytimes, and that he could not read Pope once. It was perhaps singular, but Southey, Coleridge, and Wordsworth all failed to appreciate Virgil.

Hannah More tells us that on a certain occasion when she was visiting the Garricks in 1776, David read aloud to herself and Mrs. Garrick her (Hannah's) last poem. "After dinner Garrick read 'Sir Eldred' with all his pathos and all his graces. I think I was never so ashamed in my life; but he read it so superbly that I cried like a child. Only think what a ridiculous thing to cry at the reading of one's own poetry." In another place she says: "Whether my writings have promoted the spiritual welfare of my readers, I know not; but they have enabled me to do good by private charity and public beneficence. I am almost ashamed to say that they have brought me thirty thousand pounds." Burns was affected almost to tears when he heard for the first time George Lockhart, of Glasgow, sing his verses. "I'll be hanged if I knew half their merit until now!" he said. James Hogg, the "Ettrick Shepherd," wrote, "I cannot express what my feelings were at first hearing a song of mine sung by a beautiful young lady in Ettrick to her harpsichord." One recalls in this connection the legend told in Rome of Canova's disguising himself and mingling with the crowd ofcitizens that he might hear their comments upon a newly unveiled statue just completed by his own hands, and of the great satisfaction he bore away with him at their commendations. Thomas Hood could not suppress his pleasure at listening to the "Song of the Shirt"[161]as sung by the poor sorrowing work-people in the London streets, adapted to rude airs of their own composition. Béranger, the song-writer of France, acknowledged a similar delight in hearing his verses sung upon the Parisian boulevards by the common people. Francis Jacox speaks of the first visit of the old poet Ducis to his beloved master, Louis XVIII., when that monarch graciously recited to him some of his own verses. In an ecstasy of delight Ducis exclaimed: "I am more fortunate than Boileau or Racine; they recited their verses to Louis XIV., but my king recites my verses to me!"

Though people are said to be vainer of qualities which they fondly believe they have than of those which they do really possess, still we must allow to genius some latitude in the matter of conceit, since common people exhibit so much of that spirit on no capital at all. Dr. Holmes says of conceit, that "it is to character what salt is to the ocean,—it keeps it sweet and renders it endurable." Perhaps the acme of conceit is reached when Cicero says, "For all mytoils and pains I have no recompense here; but hereafter, in heaven, among the immortal gods, I shall look back on my beloved city, and find my reward in seeing her made glorious by my career." Horace, referring to his future fame, says, "I shall not wholly die."

Vanity, says Shakespeare, keeps persons in favor with themselves who are out of favor with all others. He was not himself without a portion of that conceit which he says "in weakest bodies strongest works;" but there is this difference in his share of vanity,—he had, indeed, a genius the gods themselves might envy. He begins one of his sonnets,—

"Not marble, nor the gilded monumentsOf princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme."

And again he says:—

"Your monument shall be my gentle verse,Which eyes not yet created shall o'er-read,And tongues to be your being shall rehearseWhen all the breathers of this world are dead;You still shall live—such virtue hath my pen—Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men."

Sydney Smith's definition occurs to us here, wherein he defines vanity as "proceeding from the supposition of possessing something better than the rest of the world possesses. Nobody is vain of possessing two legs and two arms, because that is the precise quantity of either sort of limb which everybody possesses." Fielding bluntly tells the truth when he says, "There is scarcely any man, however much he may despise the character of a flatterer, but willcondescend, in the meanest manner, to flatter himself." We have seen that even Diogenes was gratified by popular praise, not to say flattered thereby; while the fact of his occupying so notable and peculiar an abode argued a degree of pride and vanity. Did not Thoreau also affect humility in his rudely built cabin on the borders of Walden Pond? Certainly the idea of Diogenes and his tub must have occurred to so classic a scholar as the Concord hermit. Southey's appeal to posterity to do him justice, in his letter to his publisher, will be remembered: "My day and popularity will come when I shall have said good-night to the world." De Quincey remarks that posterity is very hard to get at; and Swift thought the present age altogether too free in laying taxes on the next. "Future ages shall talk of this; they shall be famous to all posterity;" whereas their time and thoughts, he believed, would be taken up with present things, as ours are now. Carlyle thought Dr. Johnson's carelessness as to future fame a very remarkable trait in his character.

The vanity of authors is their shame, and ought to be their secret. While it does not necessarily detract from the merit of their excellent productions, it prejudices all by belittling them in our estimation. Oftentimes the career of these notables, as we have seen, has been one of surmounted difficulties and hardships endured for the sake of their chosen calling, embittering their nature, perhaps, yet at the same time tincturing them with an exultant spirit of success.

There are examples in abundance, however, of an opposite character—examples of true modesty and self-forgetfulness—among poets and authors generally. The poet Rogers, as well as Whittier, is a happy example of an equable life with a full share of reasonable blessings. Referring to his irreproachable career, Sheridan told Rogers it was easy for happy people to be good.

"How noiseless falls the foot of timeThat only treads on flowers!"

says William Robert Spencer. A modest estimate of self sits gracefully upon genius. Listen to Newton: "I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me." Scott was very little tainted with vanity; indeed, he wrote in his diary that no one disliked or despised the "pap" of praise so heartily as he did. He said there was nothing he scorned more, except those persons who seem to praise one in order to be puffed in return. As a rule, he did not entertain a very high opinion of literary people, or, as we have seen, desire to associate with them. He said: "If I encounter men of the world, men of business, odd or striking characters of professional excellence in any department, I am in my element, for they cannot lionize me without my returning the compliment and learning something of them."

Some people think praise so pleasant and agreeable that they cannot have too much of it. Goldsmith said Garrick was a mere glutton of praise, who swallowed all he came across and mistook it for renown,—the fluffy of dunces. Not actors alone, but writers also, are endowed with a very ravenous appetite for the same sort of nutriment. There is a nest of vanity in almost every breast, and according to Burke it is omnivorous. Rochefoucauld declared that men had little to say when not prompted by vanity.

Another example of unbounded self-conceit occurs to us in the instance of the French poet and dramatist Scudéri, the protégé of Cardinal Richelieu. His genius was not to be doubted, but it was deeply shadowed by his vanity, as made manifest in the preface to his literary works, which abounds in gasconade pure and simple. Of his epic poem "Alaric" he says: "I have such a facility in writing verses, and also in my invention, that a poem of double its length would have cost me but little trouble. Although it contains only eleven thousand lines, I believe that longer epics do not exhibit more embellishment than mine." Poor, self-satisfied Scudéri! both he and his works are very nearly forgotten, though he was an honored member of the French Academy.[162]JohnHeyward, poet and jester, a court favorite in the days of Queen Mary, is another example of consummate vanity. He was among the earliest who wrote English plays. In a work which he produced, in 1556, called "The Spider and the Fly," a parable there are seventy-seven chapters, and at the beginning of each is a portrait of the author in various attitudes, either sitting or standing by a window hung with cobwebs. Dryden honestly declared that it was better for him to own his failing of vanity than for the world to do it for him; and adds: "For what other reason have I spent my life in so unprofitable a study? Why am I grown old in seeking so unprofitable a reward as fame? The same parts and application which have made me a poet might have raised me to any honors of the gown." Sometimes Goethe speaks with the true breath of humility, and sometimes quite the reverse. He says, "Had I earlier known how many excellent things have been in existence for hundreds and thousands of years, I should have written no line; I should have had enough else to do." And yet Goethe is not only the most illustrious name in German literature, but one of the greatest poets of any age or nation.

Eugene Sue,[163]who was born in luxury, and whoneed never have written for support, would sit down to write only in full dress, even wearing, as we have seen, kid gloves,—an evidence of vanity which has a precedent in Buffon, who when found engaged in literary work was always curled, powdered, ruffled, and perfumed. N. P. Willis was as dainty in his dress as in his style of writing; and Emerson's remark relative to Nature would well apply to him, when he says, "She is never found in undress." Ruskin, who lives in a glass house as it regards the matter of self esteem, charges Goethe with self-complacency, and at the same time adds that this quality marks a second-rate character. The reader will not be long in determining which of the two was the more amenable to such criticism. Before we dismiss Mr. Ruskin let us quote a letter of his published not long since, and written so late as 1881, addressed to Alexander Mitchell. "What in the devil's name," he writes, "have you to do with either Mr. Disraeli or Mr. Gladstone? You are a student at the university, and have no more business with politics than you have with rat-catching. Had you ever read ten words of mine with understanding, you would have known that I care no more for Mr. Disraeli or Mr. Gladstone than for two old bagpipes with their drones going by steam; but that I hate all Liberalism as I do Beelzebub, and that, with Carlyle, I stand—we two alone now in England—for God and the Queen!" So much for the vanity and conceit of Mr. John Ruskin.

Pope never saw the inside of a university, or indeedof a school worthy of the name. Two Romish priests attempted at different times to do something for him as personal tutors, but with little success. "This was all the teaching I had," he says, "and God knows it extended a very little way." And yet at the age of sixteen he thought himself, as he has recorded, "to be the greatest genius that ever was;" and we are afraid that this vanity and self-conceit never quite deserted him. Atterbury compared him to Homer in a nutshell. Dr. Johnson pronounces Pope's Iliad to be "the noblest version of poetry which the world has ever seen; and its publication must therefore be considered as one of the great events in the annals of learning." As soon as Pope was pecuniarily able he made himself a comfortable home, and brought his aged parents into it and made them happy. He calls his existence "a long disease;" but if he was "sent into this breathing world but half made up," Nature compensated him by the richness with which she endowed his brain. "In the streets he was an object of pity," says Tuckerman; "at his desk, a king." Though his life was embittered in a measure by his physical deformity and by ill-health, he was not lacking in the tenderness of heart which forms the key-note to all domestic happiness. "I never in my life knew," says Bolingbroke, "a man who had so tender a heart for his particular friends, or a more general friendship for mankind." As to his poetry there has always been a great diversity of opinion, but we think it reached the height of art. It is therefore difficult to realize the egotismwhich could prompt the following couplet from his pen in the ripeness of his fame:—

"I own I'm proud,—I must be proud, to seeMen not afraid of God afraid of me."

Colley Cibber was a sharp thorn in Pope's side; he was a witty actor, as well as clever dramatist and mediocre poet. He was chosen poet-laureate in 1730. His most popular comedy was "Love's Last Shift, or the Fool in Fashion," though it divided the honors with the "Careless Husband," in which Cibber himself enacted the principal role. Dr. Johnson disliked him because, "though he was not a blockhead, he was pert, petulant, and presumptuous." On the stage he excelled in almost the whole range of light, fantastic, comic characters; but in poetry, which he much affected, his lyrics were all so bad that his friends pretended he made them so on purpose, and fully justified Johnson's remark that they were "truly incomparable." He was the recipient of a pension of two hundred pounds from George I.

There is a vein of vanity in most of us: few authors or artists are without a share; and, singular to say, it most frequently arises from trivial matters in which there would seem to be the least cause for pride. William Mitford, the author of the "History of Greece," a scholarly and admirable piece of literary work, was most proud of his election to a captaincy in the Southampton militia. To be sure, his literary work challenged some severe criticism; DeQuincey said of it, "It is as nearly perfect in its injustice as human infirmity will allow." Carlyle certainly magnified his own calling when he wrote: "O thou who art able to write a book, which once in the two centuries or oftener there is a man gifted to do, envy not him whom they name conqueror or city-builder, and inexpressibly pity him whom they name conqueror or city-burner." Great as he was in authorship, Macaulay in one of his letters remarks, "I never read again the most popular passages of my own works without painfully feeling how far my execution has fallen short of the standard which is in my mind." He is undoubtedly one of the noblest characters in English literature, and his mortal remains very properly rest in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey,—a favorite resort of the great historian during his life. As an example of modest merit we recall the name of Robert Boyle, the Irish chemist and linguist, the great experimental philosopher of the seventeenth century,—he whom some wit called "the father of chemistry and the brother of the Earl of Cork." He translated the Gospels into the Malay language, and published the translation at his own expense; he was besides a thorough Hebrew and Greek scholar. His many published works are all profound and useful. He was chosen President of the Royal Soceity, but refused the honor, from an humble estimate of his own merit, and for the same reason declined a peerage which was tendered to him. We owe to him, according to Boerhaave, "the secretsof fire, air, water, animals, plants, and fossils." Boyle cared nothing for fame.

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

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

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

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

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

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

As an example of calm, determined resolve and patience to accomplish an honorable end, we know of nothing more remarkable in connection with authorship or literature than that of Sir Walter Scott's deliberately sitting down to pay off a debt of one hundred and twenty-eight thousand pounds with his pen. Scott considered it a debt of honor, though it was not of his own contracting. Amid the pains and pressure of increasing age he worked on to fulfil this honorable purpose, until in seven years he had paid all but about twenty thousand pounds of this enormous load of debt, when the overwrought brain and body gave out, and he was laid to sleep forever. The great "Wizard of the North" says modestly: "It is with the deepest regret that I recollect in mymanhood the opportunities of learning[166]which I neglected in my youth; through every part of my literary career I have felt pinched and hampered by my own ignorance, and I would at this moment give half the reputation I have had the good fortune to acquire, if by so doing I could rest the remaining part upon a sound foundation of learning and science."

CHAPTER IX.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"All that is squalid and miserable might now be summed up in the word Poet. That word denoted a creature dressed like a scarecrow, familiar with compters and sponging-houses, and perfectly competent to decide on the comparative merits of the Common Side in the King's Bench prison and of Mount Scoundrel in the Fleet. Even the poorest pitied him; and they well might pity him. For if their condition was equally abject, their aspirings were not equally high, nor their sense of insult equally acute. To lodge in a garret up four pair of stairs, to dine in a cellar among footmen out of place, to translate ten hours a day for the wages of a ditcher, to be hunted by bailiffs from one haunt of beggary and pestilence to another,—from Grub Street to St. George's Field, and from St. George's Field to the alleys behind St. Martin's church,—to sleep on a bulk in June and amidst the ashes of a glass-house in December, to die in a hospital and to be buried in a parish vault, was the fate of more than one writer who, if he had lived thirty years earlier, would have been admitted to the sittings of the Kitcat or the Scriblerus club, would have sat in Parliament, and would have been intrusted with embassies to the High Allies; who, if he had lived in our time, would have found encouragement scarcely less munificent in Albemarle Street or in Paternoster Row."As every climate has its peculiar diseases, so every walk of life has its peculiar temptations. The literary character assuredly has always had its share of faults, vanity, jealousy, morbid sensibility. To these faults were now superadded the faults which are commonly found in men whose livelihood is precarious, and whose principles are exposed to the trial of severe distress. All the vices of the gambler and of the beggar were blended with those of the author. The prizes in the wretched lottery of book-making were scarcely less ruinous than the blanks. If good fortune came, it came in such a manner that it was almost certain to be abused. After a month of starvation and despair, a full third night or a well-received dedication filled the pocket of the lean, ragged, unwashed poet with guineas. He hastened to enjoy those luxuries with the images of which his mind had been haunted while he was sleeping amidst the cinders and eating potatoes at the Irish ordinary in Shoe Lane. A week of taverns soon qualified him for another year of night-cellars. Such was the life of Savage, of Boyse, and of a crowd of others. Sometimes blazing in gold-lace hats and waistcoats; sometimes lying in bed because their coats had gone to pieces, or wearing paper cravats because their linen was in pawn; sometimes drinking champagne and Tokay with Betty Careless; sometimes standing at the window of an eating-house in Porridge island, to snuff up the scent of what they could not afford to taste,—they knew luxury; they knew beggary; but they never knew comfort. These men were irreclaimable. They looked on a regular and frugal life with the same aversion which an old gypsy or a Mohawk hunter feels for a stationary abode, and for the restraints and securities of civilized communities."

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

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

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

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

All authorities combine in pronouncing the great speech of Sheridan on the impeachment of Warren Hastings to be one of the grandest oratorical efforts known to us. But the persuasive power of eloquence was never better illustrated than in the instance of Mirabeau when he pleaded his own case. His liaison with the Marchioness de Mounier surpasses, in fact, all stories of romance. Mirabeau induced her to run away with him, for which she was seized and thrown into a convent, while he escaped to Switzerland.[172]He was brought to trial, was convicted of contumacy, and sentenced to lose his head. The lady escaped and once more joined him; together they passed intoHolland, where they were a second time arrested, she being again immured in a convent and he confined in the Castle of Vincennes, where he remained for more than three years. After his liberation he obtained a new trial, pleaded his own case, and by the impassioned power of his all-commanding eloquence he terrified the court and the prosecutor, melted the audience to tears, obtained a prompt reversal of his sentence, and even threw the whole cost of the suit upon the prosecution.[173]

When the stupid, ill-bred Judge Robinson insulted Curran by reflecting upon his poverty while he was arguing a case before him, saying to him that he "suspected his law library was rather contracted," Curran answered the servile office-holder in words of aptest eloquence and cutting irony. "It is true, my lord," said Curran, with dignified respect, "that I am poor, and the circumstance has somewhat curtailed my library; my books are not numerous, but they are select, and I hope they have been perused with proper disposition. I have prepared myself for this high profession rather by the study of a few good works than by the composition of a great many bad ones. I am not ashamed of my poverty, but I should be ashamed of my wealth could I have stooped to acquire it by servility and corruption. If I rise not to rank, I shall at least behonest; and should I ever cease to be so, many an example shows me that ill-gained reputation, by making me the more conspicuous, would only make me the more universally and the more notoriously contemptible!"[174]

Speaking of eloquence, Hazlitt describes how he walked ten miles to hear Coleridge the poet preach, and declared that he could not have been more delighted if he had heard the music of the spheres. The names of Fox, Pitt, Grattan, Patrick Henry, Daniel Webster, Wendell Phillips, and Rufus Choate, with many others, crowd upon the mind as we dwell upon the theme of eloquence in oratory. There is eloquence of the pen as well as of the tongue; Socrates of old, celebrated for his noble oratorical compositions, was of so timid a disposition that he rarely ventured to speak in public. He compared himself to a whetstone, which will not cut, but which readily enables other things to do so; for his productions served as models to other orators.

We have myriads of examples showing us that accident has often determined the bent and development of genius. Accident may not, however, create genius; it is innate, or it is not at all. Cowley tells us that when quite young he chanced upon a copy ofthe "Faerie Queene,"[175]nearly the only book at hand, and becoming interested he read it carefully and often, until enchanted thereby he became irrevocably a poet. The apple that fell on Newton's head with a force apparently out of all proportion to its size, led him to ponder upon the fact, until he deduced the great law of gravitation and laid the foundation of his philosophy. It was Shakespeare's youthful roguery which drove him from his trade of wool-carding and necessitated his leaving Stratford. A company of strolling actors became his first new associates, and he took up with their business for a while; but dissatisfied with his own success as an actor he turned to writing plays, and thus arose the greatest dramatist the world has produced. Molière, who was of very low birth, being often taken as a lad to the theatre by his grandfather, was thus led to study the usages of the stage, and came to be the greatest dramatic author of France. "Tartuffe," which he wrote a hundred and twenty years ago, still holds the stage, as well as many others of his inimitable productions. He was the Shakespeare of France. Hallam says that Shakespeare had the greater genius,but Molière has perhaps written the better comedies. Corneille fell in love, and was thus incited to pour out his feelings in verse, developing rapidly into a poet and dramatist. He was intended for the law; but love tripped up his heels and made him a poet.

The chance perusal of De Foe's "Essay on Projects," Dr. Franklin tells us, influenced the principal events and course of his life; so the reading of the "Lives of the Saints" caused Ignatius Loyola to form the purpose of creating a new religious order,—which purpose eventuated in the powerful society of the Jesuits. Benjamin West says, "A kiss from my mother made me a painter."[176]La Fontaine read by chance a volume of Malherbe's poems,—he who was called "the poet of princes and the prince of poets,"—whereby he became so impressed, that ever after his mind sought expression through the same medium. Rousseau's eccentric genius was first aroused by an advertisement offering a prize for the best essay on a certain theme, which brought out his "Declamation against the Arts and Sciences" (winning the prize thereby), and determined his future career. The husband and father of the woman who nursed Michael Angelo were stone-masons, and the chisel thus became the first and most common plaything put into the child's hands; hence his earliest efforts were made to apply the hammer and chisel to marble, and the seed was planted which blossomed into art. It was the accidental observation of steam, lifting by its expansive power the heavy iron cover of a boiling pot, that suggested to the mind of James Watt thoughts which led to the invention of the steam-engine. The "Pickwick Papers," Dickens's earliest and best literary work, owes its origin to the publisher of a magazine upon which he was doing job-work desiring him to write a serial story to fit some comic pictures which were in the publisher's possession. The genius was in Dickens, but it slept.

The sight of Virgil's tomb, just above the Grotto of Posilippo, at Naples, determined Giovanni's literary vocation for life. So Gibbon was struck with the idea of writing his "Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire," as he sat dreaming amid the ruins of the Forum.[177]When Scott was a mere boy he chanced upon a copy of Percy's "Reliques of Ancient Poetry," which he read with eagerness again and again. As soon as he could get the necessary sum of money, he purchased a copy; and thus the taste for poetry was early instilled into his soul and found after expression in his charming poems. Scott's first literary effort was the translation of "Götz von Berlichengen," to which Carlyle ascribes large influence on the great novelist's future career. He says this translation was "the prime cause of 'Marmion' and the 'Lady of the Lake,' with all that has followed from the same creative hand. Truly a grain of seed that had lighted in the right soil. For if not firmer and fairer, it has grown to be taller and broader than any other tree; and all nations of the earth are still yearly gathering of its fruit."

While in England, not long since, the writer of these pages was told an anecdote relating to Mrs. Siddons which was new to him, and which illustrates how often accident has directed the future bent of genius. When quite a young lady, Sarah Siddons saw in some private gallery an antique statue of great excellence, which had a most electrifying effect upon her. It suggested to her at once the most effective position and manner in which to express intensity of feeling. The arms were close down at the sides, and the hands nervously clenched, while the head was erect, the chest expanded, and the face half in profile. "I cannot express how indelibly the pose took effect upon my imagination," said the great actress many years afterwards, "or the force of the lesson taught me by the marble." If memory serves us correctly, we recall an old engraving of Mrs. Siddons in the character of Lady Macbeth,which would be nearly a reproduction of the pose described.[178]

Accident developed one of the greatest vocalists the world has ever known. Jenny Lind was at the beginning of her life a poor neglected little girl, homely and uncouth, living in a single room of a tumble-down house in a narrow street at Stockholm. When the humble woman who had her in charge went out to her daily labor, she was accustomed to lock Jenny in with her sole companion, a cat. One day the little girl, who was always singing to herself like a canary-bird, "because," as she said, "the song was in her and would come out," sat with her dumb companion at the window warbling her sweet childlike notes. She was overheard by a passing lady, who paused and listened, struck by the clearness and trill of the untutored notes. She made careful inquiries about the child and became the patroness of little Jenny, who was at once supplied with a music-teacher. She loved the art of song, and had the true genius for it. Jenny made rapid progress, surprising both patroness and teachers, and presently became the great Queen of Song.

The world knows of Jenny Lind's splendid fortune, of her professional triumphs, and of her noble charities; but few, perhaps, have ever pictured her humble girlhood, cooped up in a cheerless room, with only her cat for a companion, in a dull quarter of the Swedish capital. The plain, awkward girl grew up under favorable culture to be a graceful, lovely woman. The courts of Europe treated her as a revered guest; she was covered with laurels and with jewels, but she was ever in disposition and character the same pure, simple Swedish girl. Adulation had no power to spoil this child of Nature and of art. The Swedish public cherish her name as that of their most favored daughter, and honor her for the noble educational institution which she has so liberally founded in her native Stockholm.

Christina Nilsson, another Scandinavian vocalist, was the daughter of an humble Swedish peasant, born in so lowly a cabin that it was difficult to conceive of the name of "home" being applied to it. While yet a child she was obliged to work with the rest of the family in the fields and on the mountain-side. Her sweet voice was first heard at the fairs and peasant weddings, where her simple Scandinavian melodies delighted the assembled crowds. At one of these public gatherings a man of taste and means heard the child's voice, and realized the hidden possibilities it indicated. He was a magistrate, and became her patron, taking her from her humble surroundings and supplying her with suitable teachers. She was carefully taught instrumental as well as vocal music, and became both an eminent pianist and singer, developing like her fair countrywoman, Jenny Lind, into a vocalist of grandest genius, and of such ability as the world affords but few examples.

Taglioni was also Scandinavian by birth, having been born at Stockholm, in 1804, of humble parentage, her father being a dancing-master. She had the genius of an artist, which she patiently developed through many dark hours of toil and deprivation, until she made herself acknowledged as queen of the ballet in the great cities of Europe. Her purity of character added a charm to her public performances, giving her a prestige never before enjoyed by any exponent of her art. She finally amassed a large fortune, and retiring from the stage married Count Gilbert de Voisins. Doubtless many of our readers have paused in their gondolas beneath the windows of her marble palace on the Grand Canal at Venice, to recall the story of the great danseuse, or have looked with pleasure upon her elegant villa on the Lake of Como.

CHAPTER X.

It is not the author's purpose to treat the names of painters, or indeed those of any other branch of art, especially by themselves. Were any single line to be selected, the peculiarities of its representatives would alone be sufficient to fill a volume. Under the general design of this gossip about genius, the pen is permitted to glide after its own fancy, treating only upon such individuals as readily suggest themselves, and who are illustrative of characteristics already introduced.

Upon beginning the chapter before us, we were thinking of John Opie, the distinguished English painter, born in Cornwall in 1761. When Opie was only ten years of age[179]he saw a person who was somewhat accomplished with the pencil draw a butterfly. The boy watched the process with marked interest, and as soon as the draughtsman had departed, produced upon a shingle a drawing equally good, which he showed to his mother. She, good woman, encouragedhim, as Mrs. West did her son on a similar occasion; but the father, being a harsh, rude, low-bred man, was constantly punishing the boy for laziness, and for chalking figures, faces, and animals on every stray bit of board or flat surface at hand. The boy had genius, however; what he required was opportunity. Good fortune sent Dr. Wolcott, better known as "Peter Pindar," that way. He saw the boy's dawning genius, and helped him with suitable material and some useful suggestions. It was not long before the lad got away from home, quietly aided by his good friend Wolcott, and soon earned money enough to clothe himself decently and to make a start in life. He finally married Amelia, daughter of James Alderson, who afterwards became the well-known authoress Amelia Opie. The husband developed into a distinguished artist, whose historical pictures, "The Death of Rizzio" and "Jephthah's Vow," were stepping-stones to his election as President of the Royal Academy. Does not this truthful sketch from life, of a poor wood-sawyer's son, read like romance?

Genius will assert itself; it seems useless to strive against it. The secret suggestions of the soul are true, lead us whither they will. Salvator Rosa was the son of a poor architect who made ineffectual efforts to thwart his son's predilection for art, but all in vain. The young man, finding that he could not hope for any assistance from his father, strove all the harder to earn a livelihood by painting, but nearly starved before he reached his majority. About thistime the patrons of art in Rome offered a grand prize for the best painting to be submitted at an exhibition to be held in the Eternal City. The young Neapolitan saw his chance, and painted a picture into which he infused all the glowing spirit of the art which burned within him. If it failed, he resolved that no one should know aught of its authorship. It was forwarded anonymously, and received the recognition of being hung in the most favorable position. That picture took the grand prize, the unknown artist being lauded as above Titian. Nought was to be heard for it but praise. This decided the fate of Rosa. He left his humble home near Naples and settled in Rome, where he secured the friendship and intimacy of the greatest men of the day.

Numerous and grand were the pictures sent forth from Rosa's hand; orders pressed upon him faster than he could fill them, and thus he stepped at once into the highest contemporary fame and fortune.[180]"Salvator possessed real genius," says Ruskin, "but was crushed by misery in his youth." He was not only a painter, but also a poet and a musician; nearly all cultured Italians are the latter. At the grand Carnival of the year 1639 there appeared upon the Corsoand in the squares of Rome an actor of fantastic dress, who was marked like all the other revellers on such occasions, but whose name was given as one Formica, of Southern Italy. He attracted both public and private attention by his brilliant wit, his eloquence, and especially by his songs, as he accompanied himself on the lute. He was the hero of the Carnival of that season. By and by the appointed hour arrived when all the revellers unmasked, and lo! the stranger proved to be Salvator Rosa.

Among painters, Rubens is one of the greatest and most familiar names, though Ruskin disparages him by saying that "he is a healthy, worthy, kind-hearted, courtly-phrased animal, without any clearly perceptible traces of a soul, except when he paints children." Rubens became an artist from love of art, and his career was one in which there was far more of sunshine than usually falls to the lot of genius. He throve greatly in a business point of view as well as in art, and became a man of wealth in his native city of Antwerp, where he built a comfortable house and adorned it inside with pencil and brush—the whole, as he estimated it, worth about a thousand pounds sterling. Presently there came to Antwerp the Duke of Buckingham, who coveted the artist's house. A negotiation was opened, and Rubens sold it to the Duke for twelve times what it cost, or say in our currency sixty thousand dollars.

Rubens must have possessed wonderful industry, as we judge by the fact that a hundred of his paintings maybe found in the Munich Gallery alone, not to mention those contained in other European collections. Undoubtedly his "Descent from the Cross," now in the Antwerp Cathedral, is his grandest work. Our artist was by no means without his vein of vanity, as evinced by the family picture which he painted, and in which he gives himself due prominence. This picture is placed just above his tomb, back of the altar, in the Church of St. Jacques, at Antwerp. The presumptuousness is increased by the fact that the combined portraits of his first and second wife, his daughter, with his father, grandfather, and himself, are intended to represent a Holy Family, and the painting is typical of that idea. The whole is incongruous and in bad taste. Vandyke, Teniers, and Denis Calvart, the instructor of Guido Reni, were all natives of Antwerp. The city owes its attraction to travellers almost solely to the fact that here are so many masterpieces of painting.

William Hogarth was a great and original genius, who wrote comedies pictorially, satirized vice, and depicted all phases of life more in detail than is possible with the pen. He was early apprenticed to a silversmith; but the natural bent of his genius was too apparent and promising not to be encouraged by the study of art. In the dramatic and satirical departments of design he has never been excelled. It has been objected that his pictures are vulgar; but when we remember the period in which they appeared, and also the fact that they undoubtedly convey usefullessons of morality, we shall find ample excuse if not commendation for the artist. In 1753 he published his "Analysis of Beauty," in which he maintains that a waving line is essential to beauty. Hogarth composed comedies just as much as did Molière. It was a singular characteristic of this able designer and artist that he could not successfully illustrate another's work; he is known utterly to have failed in the attempt, though never in the successful illustration of his own ideas. Hogarth was also a historian, inasmuch as every picture he produced represented the manners and customs of the period. The interior scenes give us the exact style of the furniture and minutest domestic surroundings; while out of doors we have all the various modes of conveyance in use, and a faithful picture of the street architecture. Hogarth died in 1764.

James Spencer, who was a personal friend of Hogarth, began life as a London footman; but the genius of an artist was born in him, and it gradually forced its way to the front. At odd moments he practised drawing and even painting with oils, whenever and wherever he could seize upon a brief chance. It happened that a professional portrait-painter was engaged to make a portrait of the head of the family where Spencer had long acted as footman. When the likeness was finished, he heard his master express some just dissatisfaction at its want of resemblance to the original. Spencer very humbly asked permission of his master to copy the painting andsee if he could not get a good likeness. After expressing some astonishment at the request, his master assented. In a much briefer period than the first artist occupied, and without a single sitting on the part of his employer, Spencer astonished the family by producing not only a remarkable likeness, but an entirely satisfactory painting. With such a start the footman became a professional portrait-painter, and accumulated the means ere long to set up a fine London establishment.

In an earlier part of this volume we gave numerous instances of genius being at its best in early youth, when, as Burke says, "the senses are unworn and tender, and the whole frame is awake in every part." Of this early development we know of no more striking instance in art than that of Sir Thomas Lawrence, who at the age of ten years surpassed most of the London portrait-painters both in his certain likenesses and in the general effect of his portraits. He was a remarkable genius, and for a considerable period was the talk of all London.[181]Added to his ability as an artist, young Lawrence was remarkably handsome. Prince Hoare saw something so angelic in his face that he desired to paint him in the character ofChrist. In about seven minutes Lawrence scarcely ever failed of producing in crayon an excellent likeness of any person present, and in a manner expressive of both grace and freedom. He succeeded Sir Joshua Reynolds, in due time, as first painter to the king, was knighted in 1815, and five years later became President of the Royal Academy.

To realize under what shadows many an artist has lived, worked, and died, yet who is known to us of the highest genius, we have only to recall some familiar names. Correggio was of very humble birth: and though one of the most original of all the brilliant masters of the sixteenth century, he enjoyed little contemporary fame. His works to-day are held at as high a valuation as those of Raphael, Titian, or Murillo.[182]His modesty was characteristic; his pretension, nothing. His pictures speak for him, and exhibit the softness, tenderness, and harmony of his nature. Nearly all his work was done at his native city of Correggio and at Parma; nor is he believed ever to have visited Rome. It was he who, after gazing on one of Raphael's finest productions, exclaimed, "I also am a painter!"

Correggio was chosen by the canons of the cathedral at Parma to paint for them the "Assumption ofthe Virgin." It was a subject well fitted to his style, and his conception and execution of the painting were beyond criticism. It may be seen, mellowed by age, in the Parma Cathedral to-day. When the work was done, the priests meanly haggled and found fault with it, in order to reduce the price, which had been previously agreed upon. Finally, they only paid the artist half the promised sum, stealing the balance to supply their secret luxuries. To add insult to their meanness, the priests paid the artist the price in copper coin. He could not refuse the money, for his poverty-stricken family awaited his return with it to supply their pressing needs. Correggio took the heavy burden on his shoulders and bore it two leagues and more, under a broiling Italian sun, to reach his home. On arriving there he was completely exhausted, and drank freely of the water his children brought to him; then, disheartened at his ill-fortune and broken down by fatigue, he went sadly to his rude bed, to awake on the following morning in a burning fever and delirious. In two days Correggio was no more.

The development of the genius which slept in the soul of Canova when a lad was brought about by a happy accident. A superb banquet was preparing in the palace of the Falieri family at Venice. The tables were already arranged, when it was discovered that a crowning ornament of some sort was required to complete the general effect of the banqueting board. Canova's grandfather, who brought him up, was astone-cutter, often hewing out stone ornaments for the architects; and as he lived close at hand, he was hastily consulted by the steward of the Falieris. Canova chanced to go with his grandfather to view the tables, and overheard the consultation. His quick eye and ready genius at once suggested a suitable design for the apex of the principal dishes. "Give me a plate of cold butter," said the boy; and seating himself at a side table he rapidly moulded a lion of proper proportions, and so true to nature in its pose and detail as to astonish all present. It was put in place, and proved to be the most striking ornamental article there. When the guests were seated and discovered it, they exclaimed aloud with admiration, and demanded to see at once the person who could perform such a miracle impromptu. Canova was brought before them, and his boyish person only heightened their wonder. From that hour he had in the head of this opulent family a kind, appreciative, and liberal patron. He was placed under tuition with the best sculptors of Venice and Rome, to study the art of which he finally became a grand master.[183]

The story of Spagnoletto is a romantic one, and not without a vivid moral. Of such humble birth was he,that nothing is said of it by himself or his friends. He suffered the very extreme of poverty; but feeling a deep love for art, and a consciousness within him that he was born to be a painter, he pursued this purpose through besetting difficulties for years. He still felt within him a power of genius superior to all and every disadvantage which he encountered. He was Spanish by birth, but made his way on foot to Rome, where he worked for his daily bread at anything which offered, and for many months was employed as a street porter, but at the same time followed the study of art in his humble way. One day a cardinal passing in his carriage saw in the streets a ragged person painting a board affixed to an ordinary house of Rome. The young man's wretchedness attracted his attention. It was Spagnoletto earning wherewith to purchase a loaf of bread. The cardinal questioned him, took him home to his palace and gave him every luxury he desired, as well as the means to pursue his beloved art. For a brief time all was well, and the art student made great progress; but, alas! the nature which could withstand the frowns of fortune wilted beneath her smiles, and pleasure thoroughly seduced the youth by her tempting wiles. He became a slave to the senses, neglected art entirely, and was fast going to ruin. One night Spagnoletto had a dream; it was the midnight visit of his better angel, and she prevailed. He awoke the next morning determined to leave the cardinal's palace with all its luxuries behind him, to resume his former conditionand industry. He worked his way to Naples, and by degrees rose steadily in art until he cast off his rags and was independent. He furnished so perfect a painting of Saint Bartholomew stripped to the muscles, that it became a valued study for anatomists, and from that day his fame was assured. His pictures were eagerly sought for, and to-day they adorn the best European galleries.[184]As Salvator Rosa, the Italian artist, delighted most in depicting wild, rugged mountain scenery and battles, so Spagnoletto, the Spanish painter, was most at home with martyrdoms, executions, and tragic scenes generally. He died at Naples in 1656.

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