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is useless to reply to this question,' says Gesner, for some important truths must be instinctively felt, perhaps the fundamental ones in the arts. A truly imaginative artist, whose enthusiasm was never absent when he meditated on the art he loved, Barry, thus vehemently broke forth-Go home from the Academy, light up your lamps, and exercise yourselves in the creative part of your art, with Homer, with Livy; and all the great characters, ancient and modern, for your companions and counsellors.' "Every life of a man of genius, composed by himself, presents us with the experimental philosophy of the mind. By living with their brothers, and contemplating on their masters, they will judge from consciousness less erroneously than from discussion; and in forming comparative views and parallel situations, they will discover certain habits and feelings, and find these reflected in themselves."

All that he says about youth of genius is very good-and very true-but then it is what we have read a hundred times before. His catalogue raisonneé, how ever, is certainly written in a very lively and amusing manner.

"In the old romance of King Arthur, when a cowherd comes to the king to request he would make his son a knight-It is a great thing thou askest,' said Arthur, who inquired whether this entreaty proceeded from him or his son? The old man's answer is remarkable Of my son, not of me; for I have thirteen sons, and all these will fall to that labour I put them; but this child will not labour for me, for any thing that I and my wife will do; but always he will be shooting and casting darts, and glad for to see battles, and to behold knights, and always day and night he desireth of me to be made a knight. The king commanded the cowherd to fetch all his sons; They were all shapen much like the poor man; but Tor was not like none of them in shape and in countenance, for he was much more than any of them. And so Arthur knighted him.' This simple tale is the history of genius-the cowherd's twelve sons were like himself, but the unhappy genius in the family who perplexed and plagued the cowherd and his wife and his twelve brothers, was the youth averse to labour, but active enough in performing knightly exercises; and dreaming on chivalry amidst a herd of cows.

“A man of genius is thus dropt among the people, and has first to encounter the difficulties of ordinary men deprived of that feeble ductility which adapts itself to the common destination. Parents are too often the victims of the decided propensity of a son to a Virgil or an Euclid; and the first step into life of a man of genius is disobedience and grief. Lilly, our famous astrologer, has described the frequent situation of such a youth, like the cowherd's son who

would be a knight. Lilly proposed to his father that he should try his fortune in the metropolis, where he expected that his learning and his talents would prove serviceable to him; the father, quite incapable of discovering the latent genius of his son in his studious dispositions, very willingly consented to get rid of him, for, as Lilly proceeds, I could not work, drive the plough, or endure any country labour; my father oft would say I was good for nothing,'words which the fathers of so many men of genius have repeated.

"In reading the memoirs of a man of genius we often reprobate the domestic persecutions of those who opposed his inclinations. No poet but is moved with indignation at the recollection of the Port Royal Society thrice burning the Romance which Racine at length got by heart; No geometrician but bitterly inveighs against the father of Pascal for not suffering him to study Euclid, which he at length understood without studying. The father of Petrarch in a barbarous rage burnt the poetical library of his son amidst the shrieks, the groans, and the tears of the youth. Yet this neither converted Petrarch into a sober lawyer, nor deprived him of the Roman laurel. The uncle of Alfieri for more than twenty years suppressed the poetical character of this noble bard; he was a poet without knowing to write a verse, and nature, like a hard creditor, exacted with redoubled interest, all the genius which the uncle had so long kept from her. Such are the men whose inherent impulse no human opposition, and even na adverse education, can deter from being great men.

"Let us, however, be just to the parents of a man of genius; they have another association of ideas concerning him than we; we see a great man, they a disobedient child; we track him through his glory, they are wearied by the sullen resistance of his character. The career of genius is rarely that of fortune and happiness; and the father, who may himself not be insensible to glory, dreads lest his son be found among that obscure multitude, that populace of mean artists, who must expire at the barriers of mediocrity.

"The contemplative race, even in their first steps towards nature, are receiving that instruction which no master can impart. The boy of genius flies to some favourite haunt to which his fancy has often given a name; he populates his solitude; he takes all shapes in it, he finds all places in it; he converses silently with all about him-he is a hermit, a lover, a hero. The fragrance and blush of the morning; the still hush of the evening; the mountain, the valley, and the stream; all nature opening to him, he sits brooding over his first dim images, in that train of thought we call reverie, with a restlessness of delight, for he is only the being of sensation, and has not yet learnt to think; then comes that tenderness of spirit,

that first shade of thought, colouring every
scene, and deepening every feeling; this
temperament has been often mistaken for
melancholy. One, truly inspired, unfolds
the secret story-

Indowed with all that nature can bestow,
The child of fancy oft in silence bends
O'er the mixt treasures of his pregnant breast
With conscious pride. From them he oft resolves
To frame he knows not what excelling things,
And win he knows not what sublime reward
Of praise and wonder'--

This delight in reverie has been finely de-
scribed by Boyle: When the intermission
of my studies allowed me leisure for recre-
ation,' says Boyle, I would very often steal
away from all company, and spend four or
five hours alone in the fields, and think at
random, making my delighted imagination
the busy scene where some romance or
other was daily acted.' This circumstance
alarmed his friends, who imagined that he
was overcome with melancholy.*

"It is remarkable that this love of repose and musing is retained throughout life. A man of fine genius is rarely enamoured of common amusements or of robust exercises; and he is usually unadroit where dexterity of hand or eye, or trivial elegancies, are required. This characteristic of genius was discovered by Horace in that ode which school-boys often versify. Beattie has expressly told us of his Minstrel

The exploit of strength, dexterity, or speed To him nor vanity, nor joy could bring.' Alfieri said he could never be taught by a French dancing-master, whose art made him at once shudder and laugh. If we reflect that as it is now practised it seems the art of giving affectation to a puppet, and that this puppet is a man we can enter into this mixed sensation of degradation and ridicule. Ho race by his own confession, was a very awkward rider; and the poetical rider could

not always secure a seat on his mule; Me-
tastasio humorously complains of his gun;
the poetical sportsman could only frighten
the hares and partridges; the truth was, as
an elder poet sings,

'Instead of hounds that make the wooded hills
Talk in a hundred voices to the rills,
I like the pleasing cadence of a line
Struck by the concert of the sacred Nine.'
Browne's Brit. Past. B. ii. Song 4.

And we discover the true humour of the
indolent contemplative race in their great
representatives Virgil and Horace. When
they accompanied Mecænas into the coun-
try, while the minister amused himself at
tennis, the two bards reposed on a vernal
bank amidst the freshness of the shade.
The younger Pliny, who was so perfect a
literary character, was charmed by the Ro-
man mode of hunting, or rather fowling by
nets, which admitted him to sit a whole day
with his tablets and stylus, that, says he,
'should I return with empty nets my tablets
may at least be full.' Thomson was the hero
of his own Castle of Indolence.

"The youth of genius will be apt to retire from the active sports of his mates. Beattie paints himself in his own Minstrel,

'Concourse and noise, and toil he ever fled,

Nor cared to mingle in the clamorous fray Of squabbling imps; but to the forest sped.'

"Bossuet would not join his young companions, and flew to his solitary task, while the classical boys avenged his flight by applying to him from Virgil the bos suetus aratro, the ox daily toiling in the plough. The young painters, to ridicule the perseVering labours of Domenichino in his youth, honoured him by the same title of the great ox, and Passeri, in his delightful biography of his own contemporary artists, has happily expressed the still labours of his concealed genius, sua taciturna lentezza, his silent slowness. The learned Huet has given an amusing detail of the inventive persecu "An unhappy young man who recently forfeited his life to the laws for forgery, appears to tions of his schoolmates, to divert him from have given promises of genius.-He had thrown his obstinate love of study. At length,' himself for two years into the studious retirement says he, in order to indulge my own taste, of a foreign university. Before his execution he I would rise with the sun, while they were sketched an imperfect anto-biography, and the buried in sleep, and hide myself in the following passage is descriptive of young genius: woods that I might read and study in quiet,' "About this time I became uncommonly re- but they beat the bushes and started in his served, withdrawing by degrees from the pas- burrow, the future man of erudition. Sir times of my associates, and was frequently ob- William Jones was rarely a partaker in the served to retire to some solitary place alone. active sports of Harrow; it was said of Ruined castles, bearing the vestiges of ancient Gray that he was never a boy, and the unbroils, and the impairing hand of time,cas happy Chatterton and Burns were remarkcades thundering through the echoing groves,ably serious boys. Milton has preserved rocks and precipices,-the beautiful as well as the sublime traits of nature-formed a spacious for us, in solemn numbers, his school-lifefield for contemplation many a happy hour. From these inspiring objects, contemplation would lead me to the great Author of nature. Often have I dropped on my knees, and poured out the ecstacies of my soul to the God who inspired them.'

* "Hor. Od. Lib. iv. O. 3.

When I was yet a child, no childish play To me was pleasing; all my mind was set Serious to learn and know, and thence to do What might be public good, myself I thought Born to that end, born to promote all truth, All righteous things'-

Par. Reg.

"If the youth of genius is apt to retire from the ordinary sports of his mates, he often substitutes others, the reflections of those favourite studies which are haunting his young imagination; the amusements of such an idler have often been fanciful. Ariosto, while yet a school-boy, composed a sort of tragedy from the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, and had it represented by his brothers and sisters. Pope seems to have indicated his passion for Homer in those rough scenes which he drew up from Ogilby's version; and when Sir William Jones at Harrow divided the fields according to a map of Greece, and portioned out to each schoolfellow a dominion, and further, when wanting a copy of the Tempest to act from, he supplied it from his memory, we must confess that the boy Jones was reflecting in his amusements the cast of mind he displayed in his after-life, and that felicity of memory and taste so prevalent in his literary charaeter. Florian's earliest years were passed in shooting birds all day, and reading every evening an old translation of the Iliad; whenever he got a bird remarkable for its size or its plumage, he personified it by one of the names of his heroes, and raising a funeral pyre consumed the body; collecting the ashes in an urn, he presented them to his grandfather, with a narrative of his Patroclus or Sarpedon. We seem here to detect, reflected in his boyish sports, the pleasing genius of the author of Numa Pompilius, Gonsalvo of Cordova, and William Tell."

The remarks on "The Spirit of Literature and the Spirit of Society," we think, furnish one of the most favourable instances of his reasoning powers, and are really just, acute, and given with considerable force and animation.

"When a general intercourse in society prevails, the age of great genius has passed; an equality of talents rages among a multitude of authors and artists; they have extended the superfices of genius, but have lost the intensity; the contest is more furious, but victory is more rare. The founders of national literature and art pursued their insulated studies in the full independence of their mind, and the developement of their inventive faculty. The master-spirits who create an epoch, the inventors, lived at periods when they inherited nothing from their predecessors; in seclusion they stood apart, the solitary lights of their age.

"At length, when a people have emerged to glory, and a silent revolution has obtained, by a more uniform light of knowledge coming from all sides, the genius of society becomes greater than the genius of the in dividual: hence, the character of genius itself becomes subordinate. A conversation age succeeds a studious one, and the family of genius are no longer recluses. VOL. 16-No. vi.

52

"The man of genius is now trammelled with the artificial and mechanical forms of life; and in too close an intercourse with society, the loneliness and raciness of thinking is modified away in its seductive conventions. An excessive indulgence in the pleasures of social life constitutes the great interests of a luxurious and opulent age.

"It may be a question, whether the literary man and the artist are not immolating their genius to society, when, with the mockery of Proteus, they lose their own by all forms, in the shadowiness of assumed talent. But a path of roses, where all the senses are flattered, is now opened to win an Epictetus from his but. The morning lounge, the luxurious dinner, and the evening party are the regulated dissipations of hours which true genius knows are always too short for art, and too rare for its inspirations; and hence so many of our contemporaries, whose card-racks are crowded, have produced only flashy fragments-efforts, and not works. It is seduction, and not reward, which mere fashionable society offers the man of true genius, for he must be distinguished from those men of the world, who have assumed the literary character, for purposes very distinct from literary ones. In this society, the man of genius shall cease to interest, whatever be his talent; he will be sought for with enthusiasm, but he cannot escape from his certain fate,-that of becoming tiresome to his pretended admirers. The confidential confession of Racine to his son is remarkable. 'Do not think that I am sought after by the great for my dramas; Corneille composes nobler verses than mine, but no one notices him, and he only pleases by the mouth of the actors. I never allude to my works when with men of the world, but I amuse them about matters they like to hear. My talent with them consists not in making them feel that I have any, but in showing them that they have'-Racine treated the great, like the children of society; Corneille would not compromise for the tribute he exacted; and consoled himself when, at his entrance into the theatre, the audience usually rose to salute him.

"Has not the fate of our reigning literary favourites been uniform? Their mayoralty hardly exceeds the year. They are pushed aside to put in their place another, who in his turn must descend. Such is the history of the literary character encountering the perpetual difficulty of appearing what he really is not, while he sacrifices to a few, in a certain corner of the metropolis, who have long fantastically called themselves The World,' that more dignified celebrity which makes an author's name more familiar than his person. To one who appeared astonished at the extensive celebrity of Bullon, the modern Pliny replied, I have passed fifty years at my desk. And has not one, the most sublime of the race, sung

-----che seggendo in piuma
In Fama nou si vien, ne sotto coltre;
Sanza la qual chi sua vita consuma
Cotal vestigio in terra di se lascia
Qual fummo in aere, ed in acqua la schiuma.
Dante, Inferno, c. xxiv.*

"Another, who bad great experience of the world and of literature, observes, that literary men (and artists) seek an intercourse with the great from a refinement of selflove; they are perpetually wanting a confirmation of their own talents in the opinions of others, (for their rivals are, at all times very cruelly and very adroitly diminishing their reputation;) for this purpose, they require judges sufficiently enlightened to appreciate their talents, but who do not exercise too penetrating a judgment. Now this is exactly the state of the generality of the great, (or persons of fashion,) who cultivate faste and literature; these have only time to acquire that degree of light which is just

sufficient to set at ease the fears of these claimants of genius. Their eager vanity is more voracious than delicate, and is willing to accept an incense less durable than ambrosia.

"The habitudes of genius, before it lost its freshness in this society, are the mould in which the character is cast; and these, in spite of all the disguise of the man, hereafter make him a distinct being from the man of society. There is something solitary in deep feelings; and the amusers who can only dazzle and surprise, will never spread that contagious energy only springing from the fullness of the heart. Let the man of genius then dread to level himself to that mediocrity of feeling and talent required in every-day society, lest he become one of themselves. Ridicule is the shadowy Scourge of society, and the terror of the man of genius; ridicule surrounds him with her chimeras, like the shadowy monsters which opposed Æneas, too impalpable to be grasped, while the airy nothings triumph, unwounded by a weapon. Æneas was told "to pass the grinning monsters unnoticed, and they would then be as harmless as they

were unreal.

"Study, meditation, and enthusiasm,-this is the progress of genius, and these cannot be the habits of him who lingers till he can only live among polished crowds. If he bears about him the consciousness of genius, he will be still acting under their influences. And perhaps there never was one of this class of men who had not either first entirely formed himself in solitude, or amidst society is perpetually breaking out to seek

*Not by reposing on pillows or under canopies, is fame acquired, without which he, who const mes his life, leaves such an unregarded vestige on the earth of his being, as the smoke in the air or the foam on the wave.'

D'Alembever la Socicté des Gens de Lettres et des Grands.

for himself. Wilkes, who, when no longer touched by the fervours of literary and patriotic glory, grovelled into a domestic voluptuary, observed with some surprise of the great earl of Chatham, that he sacrificed every pleasure of social life, even in youth, to his great pursuit of eloquence; and the earl himself acknowledged an artifice be practised in his intercourse with society, for he said, when he was young he always came late into company, and left it early. Vittorio Alfieri, and a brother-spirit in our own noble poet, were rarely seen amidst the brilliant circle in which they were born; the workings of their imagination were perpetually emancipating them, and one deep loneliness of feeling proudly insulated them among the unimpassioned triflers of their rank. They preserved unbroken the unity of their character, in constantly escaping from the processional spectacle of society, by frequent intervals of retirement."

We select, and with peculiar satisfaction, some of the observations on "Literary Honours."

"It is the prerogative of genius to elevate obscure men to the higher class of society; if the influence of wealth in the present day has been justly said to have created a new aristocracy of its own, and where they already begin to be jealous of their ranks, we may assert that genius creates a sort of intellectual nobility, which is conferred on some literary characters by the involuntary feelings of the public; and were men of genius to bear arms, they might consist not of imaginary things, of griffins and chimeras, but of deeds performed and of public works in existence. When Dondi raised

the great astronomical clock at the univer sity of Padua, which was long the admiration of Europe, it gave a name and nobility to its maker and all his descendants; there still lives a Marquis Dondi dal' Horologia. Sir Hugh Middleton, in memory of his vast enterprise, changed his former arms to bear three piles, by which instruments he had when his genius poured forth the waters strengthened the works he had invented, from all others in the world. Should not through our metropolis, distinguishing it Evelyn have inserted an oak-tree in his bearings? for our author's Sylva' occasioned the plantation of many millions of timber-trees,' and the present navy of Great Britain has been constructed with the oaks which the genius of Evelyn planted If the public have borrowed the names of some lords to grace a Sandwich and a Spencer, we may be allowed to raise into tities of literary nobility those distinctions which the public voice has attached to some authors; Eschylus Potter, Athenian Stuart and Anacreon Moore.

"This intellectual nobility is not chimerical; does it not separate a man from the crowd? Whenever the rightful possessor

appears, will not the eyes of all spectators be fixed on him? I allude to scenes which I have witnessed. Will not even literary honours add a nobility to nobility? and teach the nation to esteem a name which might otherwise be hidden under its rank, and remain unknown? Oar illustrious list of literary noblemen is far more glorious than the satirical Catalogue of Noble Authors,' drawn up by a polished and heartless cynic, who has pointed his brilliant shafts at all who were chivalrous in spirit, or appertained to the family of genius. One may presume on the existence of this intellectual nobility, from the extraordinary circumstance that the great have actually felt a jealousy of the literary rank. But no rivality can exist in the solitary honour conferred on an author; an honour not derived from birth, nor creation, but from PUBLIC OPINION; and as inseparable from his name, as an essential quality is from its object; for the diamond will sparkle and the rose will be fragrant, otherwise, it is no diamond nor rose. The great may well condescend to be humble to genius, since genius pays its homage in becoming proud of that humility. Cardinal Richelieu was mortified at the celebrity of the unbending Corneille; several noblemen were, at Pope's indifference to their rank; and Magliabechi, the book-prodigy of his age, whom every literary stranger visited at Florence, assured Lord Raley, that the Duke of Tuscany had become jealous of the attention he was receiving from foreigners, as they usually went first to see Magliabechi before the grand duke. A confession by Montesquieu states, with open candour, a fact in his life, which confirms this jealousy of the great with the literary character. On my entering into life, I was spoken of as a man of talents, and people of condition gave me a favourable reception; but when the suc cess of my Persian Letters proved, perhaps, that I was not unworthy of my reputation, and the public began to esteem me, my reception with the great was discouraging, and I experienced innumerable mortifications.' Montesquieu subjoins a reflection sufficiently humiliating for the mere nobleman: The great, inwardly wounded with the glory of a celebrated name, seek to humble it. In general, he only can patiently endure the fame of others, who deserves fame himself.' This sort of jealousy unquestionably prevailed in the late Lord Orford; a wit, a man of the world, and a man of rank, but while he considered literature as a mere amusement, he was mortified at not obtaining literary celebrity; he felt his authorial, always beneath his personal character; he broke with every literary man who looked up to him as their friend; and how he has delivered his feelings on Johnson, Goldsmith, and Gray, whom, unfortunately for him, he personally knew, it fell to my Yot to discover: I could add, but not dimi

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"Who was the dignified character, Lord Chesterfield or Samuel Johnson, when the great author, proud of his labour, rejected his lordship's sneaking patronage? I value myself,' says Swift, upon making the ministry desire to be acquainted with Parnell, and not Parnell with the ministry.' Piron would not suffer the literary character to be lowered in his presence. Entering the apartment of a nobleman, who was conducting another peer to the stairs head, the latter stopped to make way for Piron. 'Pass on, my lord,' said the noble master, pass, he is only a poet.' Piron replied, Since our qualities are declared, I shall take any rank,' and placed himself before the lord. Nor is this pride, the true source of elevated character, refused to the great artist as well as the great author. Michael Angelo, invited by Julius II. to the court of Rome, found that intrigue had indisposed his holiness towards him, and more than once the great artist was suffered to linger in attendance in the anti-chamber. day the indignant man of genius exclaimed, Tell his holiness, if he wants me, he must look for me elsewhere.' He flew back to his beloved Florence, to proceed with that celebrated cartoon, which afterwards became a favourite study with all artists. Thrice the Pope wrote for his return, and at length menaced the little state of Tuscany with war, if Michael Angelo prolonged his absence. He returned. The sublime artist knelt at the feet of the father of the church, turning aside his troubled countenance in silence; an intermeddling bishop offered himself as a mediator, apologising for our artist by observing, that of this proud humour are these painters made!" Julius turned to this pitiable mediator, and, as Vasari tells, used a switch on this occasion, observing, 'You speak injuriously of him, while I am silent. It is you who are ignorant.' Raising Michael Angelo, Julius II. embraced the man of genius. I can make lords of you every day, but I cannot create a Titian,' said the Emperor Charles V. to his courtiers, who had become jealous of the hours, and the half-hours, which that monarch managed, that he might converse with the man of genius at his work. There is an elevated intercourse between power and genius; and if they are deficient in reciprocal esteem, neither are great. The intellectual nobility seems to have been asserted by De Harlay, a great French statesman, for when the academy was once not received with royal honours, he complained to the French monarch, observing, that when a man of letters was presented to Francis I. for the first time, the king always. advanced three steps from the throne to receive him.'

* "Calamities of Authors. vol. i.

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