Genius in Sunshine and Shadow

Guizot, the distinguished French statesman and historian, seems to have been "a child who had no childhood." At eleven years of age he was able to read in their respective languages Thucydides, Demosthenes, Dante, Schiller, Gibbon, and Shakespeare.

Robert Hall, the eloquent English clergyman, was a remarkable instance of early mental development. It is said that before he was ten years of age he perused with interest and understanding Edwards's treatises on the "Affections" and on the "Will." His sermons, essays, and writings generally were eagerly read and admired by the public; but excessive application at last brought on insanity. It was gracefully said of him that his imperial fancy laid all nature under tribute. Even in madness he did not lose his power of retort. A hypocritical condoler visited him in the mad-house, and asked in a servile tone: "Pray, what brought you here, Mr. Hall?" Hall touched his brow significantly with his finger, and replied, "What'll never bring you, sir, – too much brains!"[34 - After a couple of years Hall was restored to the full possession of his faculties, and for twenty years thereafter maintained his high reputation as a pulpit orator. He died in 1831.]

Macaulay had already won an exalted reputation for prose and poetry before he was twenty-three, and N. P. Willis, before he left college, had achieved enduring fame by his sacred poems,[35 - Fifty years after these poems were published, as we are informed by the publishers, there is a steady demand for from two to three hundred copies annually. Of how many American books, of a similar character, can this be said?] which, in fact, he never afterwards excelled in a long and successful literary career. Schiller wrote and published in his fourteenth year a poem on Moses. Klopstock began his "Messiah" at seventeen, and Tasso had produced his "Rinaldo," and completed the first three cantos of "Jerusalem Delivered," before he was nineteen. Milton was an unremitting student at ten. Southey began to write verses before he was eleven, Chaucer and Cowley at twelve, and Leigh Hunt at about the same age. Pope,[36 - I wrote things, I'm ashamed to say how soon. Part of an epic poem when about twelve. The scene of it lay at Rhodes and some of the neighboring islands; and the poem opened under water, with a description of the Court of Neptune. —Pope.] like so many others, began to write poetry as a child, thus proving that "poets are born and not made." Chatterton, the remarkable literary prodigy, died at eighteen, but not until he had established a lasting reputation. Bulwer-Lytton was a successful author at about the same age, and so were Keats and Bayard Taylor. Dickens produced the "Pickwick Papers" before he was twenty-five, and it may safely be said that in wit, humor, and originality he never surpassed that delicious book. These seem interesting facts to remember, though they do not establish any actual criterion, since the thoughtful student of the past can adduce many notable examples of mature development in art and literature.

Among these is that of Edmund Burke, on the whole the greatest of English philosophical statesmen. He is the most remarkable instance of a number of men of genius who seem to have grown younger as they grew older, – that is, mentally and morally. Macaulay has noticed that Bacon's writings towards the close of his career exceeded those of his youth and manhood "in eloquence, in sweetness and variety of expression, and in richness of illustration."[37 - Lord Brougham hoped to see the day when every man in the United Kingdom could read Bacon. "It would be much more to the purpose," said Cobbett, "if his lordship could use his influence to see that every man in the kingdom could eat bacon."] He adds: "In this respect the history of his mind bears some resemblance to the history of the mind of Burke. The treatises on the 'Sublime and Beautiful,'[38 - On a certain occasion when Barry, the eminent painter, exhibited one of his admirable pictures, some one present doubted that it was his work, so remarkable was its excellence, and Barry at the time had not established any special fame. The artist was so affected by the remark that he burst into tears and retired. Burke, who was present, followed him to pacify his grief. The painter by chance quoted some passages of the newly published essay on the "Sublime and Beautiful." It appeared anonymously, and Burke took occasion to sneer at it, when Barry showed more feeling than he had done about his picture. He commended the essay in the most earnest language. Burke, smiling, acknowledged its authorship. "I could not afford to buy it," replied the astonished artist, "but I transcribed every line with my own hands;" at the same time pulling the manuscript from his pocket. This was commendation so sincere and appreciative, that the great author and the great painter clasped hands in mutual friendship.] though written on a subject which the coldest metaphysician could hardly treat without being occasionally betrayed into florid writing, is the most unadorned of Burke's works. It appeared when he was twenty-five or twenty-six. When, at forty, he wrote the 'Thoughts on the Causes of the Present Discontents,' his reason and judgment had reached their full maturity, but his eloquence was in its splendid dawn. At fifty his rhetoric was as rich as good taste would admit; and when he died, at almost seventy, it had become ungracefully gorgeous. In his youth he wrote on the emotions produced by mountains and cascades, by the masterpieces of painting and sculpture, by the faces and necks of beautiful women, in the style of a Parliamentary report. In his old age he discussed treaties and tariffs in the most fervid and brilliant language of romance."

Socrates learned to play on musical instruments in his old age. Cato at eighty first studied the Greek language, and Plutarch did not apply himself to learn the Latin language until about the same age. Theophrastus[39 - Menander, the poet, was Theophrastus's favorite pupil.] began his "Character of Man" on his ninetieth birthday. Peter Rusard, one of the fathers of French poetry, did not develop his poetic faculty until nearly fifty. Arnauld, the learned French theologian and philosopher, translated Josephus in his eightieth year. Lope de Vega, one of the most learned men of the sixteenth century, wrote his best at seventy years of age. Dr. Johnson applied himself to learn the Dutch language at seventy. At seventy-three, when quite feeble, he composed a Latin prayer to test to his own satisfaction the loss or retention of his mental faculties. Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" were the work of the author's last years. Franklin's philosophical pursuits were but fairly begun at fifty. La Mothe le Vayer's best treatises were written after he was eighty years of age, and Izaak Walton's when he was nearly ninety. Thomas Hobbes, the remarkable English philosopher and author, published his version of the Odyssey in his eighty-seventh year, and his Iliad in his eighty-eighth. Winckelmann,[40 - Winckelmann, one of the most distinguished writers on classic antiquities and the fine arts, was the son of a shoemaker. He contrived, by submitting to all sorts of personal deprivation, to fit himself for college, and to go through with the studies there by teaching young and less advanced fellow-students, at the same time supporting a bedridden and helpless father.] author of the "History of Ancient Art," lived in ignorance and obscurity until the prime of his life, when he became famous. Landor was busy with authorship until after he was eighty. The Earl of Chatham made his most remarkable oratorical effort at seventy, and our own American orator and statesman, Robert C. Winthrop, at a still later period of his life. Fontenelle continued his literary pursuits until he was ninety-nine, "blossoming in the winter of his days," as Lord Orrery wrote of him. Ménage, the celebrated French critic and scholar, wrote sonnets and epigrams at ninety. Julius Scaliger, the renowned Italian scholar and poet, dictated to his son, at the age of seventy, two hundred verses of his own composition from memory. Mr. Gladstone and John Bright, the English statesmen, are more recent examples of oratorical, mental, and physical powers in advanced years. George Bancroft the American historian, in his eighty-sixth year is still engaged in authorship, and Whittier and Holmes are writing with unabated vigor at nearly eighty years of age. Miss Elizabeth Peabody at eighty-four is still a vigorous writer and active philanthropist, and the same may be said of Mrs. Julia Ward Howe at the age of sixty-six. Mrs. Howe, indeed, is one of the foremost of American women, whether we regard the ripeness of her scholarship, the breadth of her understanding, the richness of her imagination, or the quiet intrepidity with which she champions great reforms.

CHAPTER II

Who does not enjoy recalling these silent friends, favorite authors grown dear to us by age and long association? Some one has said that authors, like coins, grow dearer as they grow old. Indeed, Samuel Rogers, the banker and poet, declared that when friends at his famous "breakfasts" were praising a new book, he forthwith began to re-read an old one. All these writers were double-sided, so to speak; they had their book natures and their human natures, and it is when we prefer to contemplate them in the latter aspect that we like them best. Carlyle calls them "the vanguard in the march of mind, the intellectual backwoodsmen reclaiming from the idle wilderness new territory for the thought and activity of their happier brethren." It is true that we can form but a partial judgment of authors by their books, their motives being not always as pure as we are inclined to believe.[41 - "People may be taken in once, who imagine that an author is greater in private life than other men," says Dr. Johnson.] A traitor like Bolingbroke is quite capable of writing a captivating book on patriotism; and it has been said if Satan were to write one, it would be upon the advantages of virtue.

It is certain he has ever shown such a hearty appreciation of virtue that he holds in highest estimation his success in corrupting it. Examples flash across the memory. There was Sir Thomas More advocating toleration, while he was himself a fierce persecutor; Sallust declaring against the licentiousness of his age, yet addicted to habitual debaucheries; Byron assuming a misanthropy which he never felt; and Cowley boasting of his mistresses, though he had not the courage even to address one. Smollett's descriptions and scenes were often indelicate, though he was himself in that respect a faultless man. "As a rule, the author who is not in genius far above his productions must be a second-rate one at best," says Bulwer-Lytton. Sometimes we detect striking likenesses between the author and his works. Goldsmith, for instance, was the same hero to low-bred women, and the same coward to ladies, that he depicts in his charming comedy. It is difficult, however, in the light of Handel's inspired music, to realize what an animal nature possessed him in his every-day mood, – what a glutton he was at table; or to reconcile the sublime strains of Mozart with his trivial personality.[42 - Such incongruities do exist: nothing is infallible; phrenologists even find the crania of some men to exhibit contradictory evidences. When Sydney Smith with some friends submitted his head to be examined by a phrenologist who did not know him, the party were amused at the examiner declaring him to be a great naturalist, – "never happier than when arranging his birds and fishes." "Sir," said the divine, "I don't know a fish from a bird!"] Still, Buffon persistently declares, "Le style c'est l'homme."

Addison, recognized as the purest and most perspicuous writer of the English language, though exercising such mastership of the pen, had no oral ability, and rarely attempted to talk in social circles. He said of himself that though he had a hundred pounds in the bank, he had no small coin in his pocket.[43 - "Men of genius," says Longfellow, "are often dull and inert in society; as the blazing meteor, when it descends to earth, is only a stone."]

Dr. Johnson and Coleridge were famous for their colloquial facility, but both of these were rather lecturers than talkers, however delightful in this respect the latter may have been. Johnson during his life was undoubtedly more of a power as a talker than as a writer. It has been said that Scott talked more poetry and Edmund Burke more eloquence than they ever wrote. Emerson thought that "better things are said, more incisive, more wit and insight are dropped in talk and forgotten, than gets into books." E. H. Chapin and H. W. Beecher have talked sounder and more brilliant theology than they ever preached from the pulpit. Spontaneous thoughts come from our inner consciousness; sermons and essays, from the cooler action of the brain. Coleridge, on first meeting Byron, entertained the poet with one of his monologues, wherein he ascended into the seventh heaven upon wings of theology and metaphysics. Leigh Hunt described the scene to Charles Lamb, and expressed his wonder that Coleridge should have chosen so unsympathetic an auditor. "Oh, it was only his fun," explained Lamb; "there's an immense deal of quiet humor about Coleridge!" Wordsworth speaks of him as the "rapt one, with the godlike forehead," the "heaven-eyed creature." Hazlitt says that "no idea ever entered the mind of man, but at some period or other it had passed over his head with rustling pinions." Talfourd writes of seeing "the palm-trees wave, and the pyramids tower, in the long perspective of his style." When Coleridge once asked Lamb, "Charles, did you ever hear me preach?" he received the quiet reply, "I never heard you do anything else." Rogers tells us: "Coleridge was a marvellous talker. One morning, when Hookham Frere also breakfasted with me, Coleridge talked for three hours without intermission about poetry, and so admirably that I wish every word he uttered had been written down." Madame de Staël said of him that he was great in monologue, but that he had no idea of dialogue.

Macaulay was also remarkable for his conversational powers, which were greatly aided by an excellent memory. He has been accused of talking too much; and Sydney Smith once said of him: "He is certainly more agreeable since his return from India. His enemies might perhaps have said before – though I never did so – that he talked rather too much; but now he has occasional flashes of silence that make his conversation perfectly delightful!" In a party in which eminent men are present, the rule is said to be that, for good conversation, the number of talkers should never be fewer than the Graces or more than the Muses. Goldsmith, who wrote so charmingly and exhibited such a remarkable versatility with the pen, could make no figure in conversation. Fox, Bentley, Burke, Curran, and Swift were all brilliant talkers; Tasso, Dante, Gray, and Dryden[44 - Dryden said of himself: "My conversation is slow and dull, my humor saturnine and reserved. In short, I am none of these who endeavor to break jests in company, or make repartees." And yet at Will's Coffee-House, where the wits of the town met, his chair in winter was always in the warmest nook by the fire, and in summer was placed in the balcony. "To bow to him, and to hear his opinion of Racine's last tragedy or of Bossuet's treatise on epic poetry was thought a privilege. A pinch from his snuff-box was an honor sufficient to turn the head of a young enthusiast." Every one must remember how, in Scott's novel of the "Pirate," Claud Halcro is continually boasting of having obtained at least that honor from "Glorious John."] were all taciturn. Of Ben Jonson it is said that he was mostly without speech, sitting by the hour quite silent in society, sucking in the wine and humor of his companions.

Sheridan had the reputation of being a brilliant conversationalist; but we all know that many of his "impromptus" were laboriously prepared beforehand, and that he was wont to lie in wait silently for half an evening watching his opportunity to discharge the arrows of his polished wit. One would be glad to learn how it was with Shakespeare in society. He could hold his own in a controversy, however, as Thomas Fuller, in his "Worthies of England," says, "Many were the wet-combats between him and Ben Jonson:[45 - Jonson was a bricklayer, like his father before him. "Let them blush not that have, but those who have not, a lawful calling," says Thomas Fuller as he records this fact; and goes on to say that "Jonson helped in the construction of Lincoln's Inn, with a trowel in his hand and a book in his pocket. Some gentlemen pitying that his parts should be buried under the rubbish of so mean a calling, did by their bounty manumise him freely to follow his own ingenious inclinations."] which two I behold like a Spanish great galleon and an English man-of-war; master Jonson, like the former, was built far higher in learning; solid, but slow, in his performances. Shakespeare, like the English man-of-war, lesser in bulk but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds by the quickness of his wit and invention." Shakespeare himself has said, "Silence is only commendable in a neat's tongue dried and a maid not vendible;" but the ancient stoics thought that by silence they heard other men's imperfections and concealed their own.

The diplomatist Metternich said he had never known more than ten or twelve persons with whom it was pleasant to converse. Margaret Fuller said Carlyle's talk was an amazement to her, though she was familiar with his writings. His conversation, she declared, was a splendor scarcely to be faced with steady eye. He did not converse – only harangued. She thought him "arrogant and overbearing, but it was not the arrogance of littleness, nor self-love, but rather the arrogance of some old Scandinavian conqueror; it was his nature, the untamable impulse that had given him power to crush the dragons. She was not led to love or revere him, but liked him heartily, – liked to see him the powerful smith, the Siegfried, melting all the old iron in his furnace till it glows to a sunset red and burns you, if you senselessly go too near."[46 - Margaret Fuller by marriage became the Marchioness of Ossoli, and with her husband and child perished in the wreck of the brig "Elizabeth," from Leghorn, near Fire Island, in 1850. She was one of the most gifted literary women of America.]

When Dr. Johnson was asked why he was not invited out to dine as Garrick[47 - Garrick was so popular that it was impossible for him to respond to half the social invitations which he received from the nobility. Even royalty itself honored him by private interviews, often listening to his readings in the domestic circle of the palace. Though he was always rewarded by the hearty approval of the king and queen, he said its effect upon him was like a "wet blanket" compared with the thunders of applause which he usually received in public.] was, he answered, as if it was a great triumph to him, "Because great lords and ladies don't like to have their mouths stopped!" He indulged a furious hatred to Americans, and whenever there was an opportunity sneered at them even more bitterly than he did at Scotchmen. It will be remembered that he thought something could be made out of a Scotchman "if you caught him young;" but he would not admit even this saving clause as regarded Americans. He said, "I am willing to love all, all mankind, except an American." He called them "robbers and pirates;" adding, "I'd burn and destroy them!"

These words were addressed to Miss Anna Seward, of Lichfield. It was in the grammar school of this ancient cathedral town that Addison, Dr. Johnson, 788788and Garrick received their early education, and Johnson was a native of the place. Miss Seward's father was the canon resident of Lichfield Cathedral. In his family there was a beautiful young lady named Honora Sneyd, a companion to his daughter. John André, a cultured London youth, fell in love with Honora, and was tacitly accepted. The young man was somewhat suddenly called back to the metropolis on business, and a separation thus ensued which seemed to wean the lady's affections from him, so that she soon after married a Mr. Edgeworth and in the course of time became the mother of Maria Edgeworth, the well-known novel-writer.[48 - Sir Walter Scott greatly admired Maria Edgeworth's novels, complimenting "her wonderful power of vivifying all her persons and making them live as beings in your mind." Lord Jeffrey honored "their singular union of sober sense and inexhaustible invention." She died in 1849, in her eighty-second year.] John André remained faithful to his first love, and came to America carrying in his bosom a miniature of Honora suspended from his neck. His sad fate during our Revolutionary War is well known to all. He was the Major André whom Washington reluctantly executed as a spy, and whose memorial is now conspicuous in Westminster Abbey.

Peter Corneille, the great French dramatic poet, had nothing in his exterior that indicated his genius. As to his conversational powers, they were simply insipid, and never failed to weary all listeners. Nature had endowed him with brilliant gifts, but forgot to grant him the ordinary accomplishments. He did not even speak correct French, which he never failed to write with perfection. When his friends represented to him how much more he might please by not disdaining to correct these trivial errors, he would smile and say, "I am none the less Peter Corneille!" We learn from Rogers that in the early days of his popularity Byron was quite diffident in society, or at least never ventured to take part in the conversation. If any one happened to let fall an observation which offended him, he never attempted to reply, but treasured it up for days, and would then come out with some cutting remarks, giving them as his deliberate opinion, the result of his experience of the individual's character. Southey[49 - Southey was marvellously industrious, as over one hundred published volumes testify. Few men have been students so long and consecutively. He possessed one of the largest private libraries in England. He says: "Having no library within reach, I live upon my own stores, which are, however, more ample perhaps than were ever before possessed by one whose whole estate was in his inkstand." He generously supported the family of Coleridge, who were left destitute. His first wife was a sister of Coleridge's wife.] was stiff, reserved, sedate, and so wrapped up in a garb of asceticism that Charles Lamb once stutteringly told him he was "m-made for a m-m-monk, but somehow the co-co-cowl didn't fit."

Racine made this confidential confession to his son: "Do not think that I am sought after by the great on account of my dramas; Corneille composed 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." The well-remembered saying about Goldsmith's lack of conversational power is excellent because it was so true; namely, that "he wrote like an angel and talked like poor Poll."[50 - "To expect an author to talk as he writes is ridiculous," says Hazlitt; "even if he did, you would find fault with him as a pedant."] Fisher Ames and Rufus Choate were distinguished for their conversational powers. Stuart, the American painter, was remarkable in this respect; and so were Washington Allston, Edgar A. Poe, Margaret Fuller, and the late Caleb Cushing. The lady just named was considered to be the best talker of her sex since Madame de Staël. Indeed, those who knew her well said she talked even better than she wrote, which was saying much.

Charles Sumner used to relate a talk in a company where Daniel Webster was present. The question under discussion was what were the best means of culture. Webster was silent until all had spoken. He then said: "Gentlemen, you have overlooked one of the means of culture which I consider of the first importance, and from which I have gained the most; that is, good conversation."[51 - There is a sort of knowledge beyond the power of learning to bestow, and this is to be had in conversation: so necessary is this to understanding the characters of men, that none are more ignorant of them than those learned pedants whose lives have been entirely consumed in colleges and among books. —Fielding.]

Whipple has said in one of his essays that "real, earnest conversation is a kind of intellectual cannibalism, where strong minds feed on each other and mightily enjoy the repast."

Charles Lamb's most sportive essays, which read as though they came almost spontaneously from his pen, are known to have been the result of intense brain labor. He would spend a whole week in elaborating a single humorous letter to a friend. Lamb was so sensitive concerning proof-reading as to be the dread of the printers. It is said of the poet-laureate of England that he has been known to re-write a poem twenty times and more before he was satisfied to give it to the printer. Dickens, when writing a book, was accustomed to shut himself up for days together, and to work with fearful energy until the task was completed; after which he would come forth presenting the appearance of a person recovering from a fit of illness. The free-and-easy spirit which characterizes his pages affords no evidence of the travail through which their author passed in giving them birth. Bulwer-Lytton took matters much more philosophically. He always worked at pen-craft leisurely, never more than three or four hours a day; and yet by carefully observing a system the aggregate of his productions was very large. Balzac, after thinking over a subject, would retire to his study and write it out half a dozen times before he gave the manuscript to the printer, whom he afterwards tormented to the very verge of exasperation by his proof alterations. To come nearer to our own time, we may remark that Longfellow, whose versification seems always to have flowed with such ease and fluency from his pen, was a slow and painstaking producer, sometimes altering and amending until the original draft of an essay or poem was quite improved out of sight.

Dr. Channing nearly drove his printers crazy; after his manuscript – almost illegible by corrections and interlineations – had been returned to them with alterations, omissions, and additions on the first proof-sheets, he would ponder over, alter, and amend three or four successive proofs before he finally allowed the result to meet the public eye, – a new edition involving another series of alterations. The lyric which cost Tennyson the most trouble was "Come into the Garden, Maud." It is said to have been held back from the public after it had been a year in his hands, going through repeated processes of alteration. What time indorses, requires time to create and finish. To this determination of Tennyson to condense all his thoughts into the smallest space, and never to expand when by patient labor he can contract, we owe the few lines in which he states in the "Princess" the whole nebular theory of the universe as expounded by Kant and Laplace; and how much reflection must have been required to condense the description of the fundamental defect of English law, on which volumes have been written, as he has done in "Aylmer's Field: " —

"The lawless science of our law,
That codeless myriad of precedent,
That wilderness of single instances."

When we observe good workmanship, whether it be by a stone-mason, a cabinet-maker, or a writer, we may be sure that it has cost much patient labor. His biographer tells us that Moore thought ten or fifteen lines in twenty-four hours a good day's accomplishment in poetry; and at this rate he wrote "Lalla Rookh."[52 - His publishers paid Moore three thousand guineas for the copyright of "Lalla Rookh," his favorite production; and the liberal purchasers, Longman & Co., had no reason to regret their bargain. When Moore's "Lalla Rookh" first appeared, the author was terribly taken aback in company by Lady Holland, who said to him, "Mr. Moore, I don't intend to read your Larry O'Rourke; I don't like Irish stories!"] Wordsworth wrote his verses, laid them aside for weeks, then, taking them up, frequently rewrote them a score of times before he called them finished. Buffon's "Studies of Nature" cost him fifty years of writing and re-writing before the work was published. John Foster, the profound and eloquent English essayist, often spent hours upon a single sentence. Ten years elapsed between the first sketch of Goldsmith's "Traveller" and its final completion. Rochefoucauld[53 - Madame de Lafayette was a warm friend of Rochefoucauld. She was intimately allied to the clever men of the time, and was respected and loved by them. The author of the "Maxims" owed much to her, while she also was under obligations to him. Their friendship was of mutual benefit. "He gave me intellect," she said, "and I reformed his heart."] spent fifteen years over his little book of Maxims, altering some of them thirty times. Rogers admitted that he had more than once spent ten days upon a single verse before he turned it to suit him. Vaugelas, the great French scholar, devoted twenty years to his admirable translation of "Quintus Curtius."

Some authors have produced with such rapidity as to approach improvisation. Perhaps the most remarkable instance of this was in the case of Lope de Vega, who composed and wrote a versified drama in a single day, and is known to have done so for seven consecutive days. Contemporary with Shakespeare and Cervantes, De Vega has left behind him two thousand original dramas sparkling with vivacity of dialogue and richness of invention. Soldier, duellist, poet, sailor, and priest, his long life was one of intense activity and adventure.[54 - His enemies having declared that De Vega's dramas were not judged upon their merit, but were popular because they bore his name, – to try the public taste he wrote and published a book of poems anonymously, entitled "Soliloquies on God." Their merit was undisputed, and they were vastly popular, until the carping critics threatened him with the unknown author as a rival. His triumph when he claimed them as his own was complete.] The name of Hardy, the French dramatic author and actor, occurs to us in this connection; though an inferior genius to De Vega, he wrote over six hundred original dramas. He was considered the first dramatic writer of the days of Henry IV. and Louis XIII., before whom Hardy often appeared upon the stage personating the heroes of his own dramas.

Prynne, the English antiquary, politician, and pamphlet-writer, sat down early in the morning to his composition. Every two hours his man brought him a roll and a pot of ale as refreshment; and so he continued until night, when he partook of a hearty dinner. One of his pamphlets was entitled "A Scourge for Stage-Players," which was considered so scurrilous that the Star-Chamber sentenced him to pay a heavy fine, to be exposed in the pillory, to lose his ears, and to be imprisoned for life. He was finally released from prison. While he was confined in the pillory, a pyramid of his offending pamphlets was made close at hand, to windward of his position, and set on fire, so that the author was very nearly choked to death by the smoke. He was almost as incessant and inveterate a writer as Petrarch, and considered being debarred from pen and ink an act more barbarous than the loss of his ears. However, he partially obviated his want of the usual facilities by writing a whole volume on his prison walls while confined in the Tower of London.

Byron wrote the "Corsair" in ten days, which was an average of nearly two hundred lines a day, – a fact which he acknowledged to Moore with a degree of shame. He said he would not confess it to everybody, considering it to be a humiliating fact, proving his own want of judgment in publishing, and the public in reading, "things which cannot have stamina for permanent attention." The surpassing beauty of the "Corsair," however, excuses all the author said or did in connection with it. It may nevertheless be affirmed that, as a rule, no great work has ever been performed with ease, or ever will be accomplished without encountering the throes of time and labor. Dante, we remember, saw himself "growing lean" over his "Divine Comedy." Mary Russell Mitford, the charming English authoress, dramatist, poet, and novelist, who so excelled in her sketches of country life, says of herself: "I write with extreme slowness, labor, and difficulty; and, whatever you may think, there is a great difference of facility in different minds. I am the slowest writer, I suppose, in England, and touch and retouch incessantly." Her life was one of constant labor and self-abnegation in behalf of a worthless, selfish, and imperious father. He was a robust, showy, wasteful profligate, and a gambler. A doctor by profession, he was a spendthrift and sensualist by occupation. He contracted a venal marriage with an heiress much older than himself, and after squandering her entire fortune he fell back upon his daughter as the bread-winner for the whole family. By a remarkable chance she became the possessor of a great lottery prize, from which she realized twenty thousand pounds, every penny of which her beastly father drank and gambled away. Still, the devotion and industry of the daughter never waned for a moment. Her patient struggles have placed her name on the roll of fame, while her father's has sunk into deserved oblivion.

De Tocqueville wrote to his publishers: "You must think me very slow. You would forgive me if you knew how hard it is for me to satisfy myself, and how impossible it is for me to finish things incompletely." Horace suggested that authors should keep their literary productions from the public eye for at least nine years, which certainly ought to produce "the well-ripened fruit of sage delay." After a labor of eleven years Virgil pronounced his Æneid imperfect. This recalls the Italian saying, "One need not be a stag, neither ought one to be a tortoise." Tasso's manuscript, which is still extant, is almost illegible because of the number of alterations which he made after having written it. Montaigne, "the Horace of Essayists," could not be induced, so lazy and self-indulgent was he, to even look at the proof-sheets of his writings. "I add, but I correct not," he said.

The writer of these pages has seen the original draft of Longfellow's "Excelsior," so interlined and amended to suit the author's taste as to make the manuscript rather difficult to decipher. The poet wrote a back-hand, as it is called; that is, the letters sloped in the opposite direction from the usual custom, and as a rule his writing was remarkably legible. Coleridge was very methodical as to the time and place of his composition. He told Hazlitt that he liked to compose walking over uneven ground, or making his way through straggling branches of undergrowth in the woods; which was a very affected and erratic notion, and might better have been "whipped out of him."[55 - Coleridge tells us how he was once cured of infidelity by his teacher. "I told Boyer that I hated the thought of becoming a clergyman. 'Why so?' said he. 'Because, to tell you the truth, sir,' I said, 'I'm an infidel!' For this, without further ado, Boyer flogged me, – wisely, as I think, soundly, as I know. Any whining or sermonizing would have gratified my vanity, and confirmed me in my absurdity; as it was, I was laughed at, and got heartily ashamed of my folly."] Wordsworth, on the contrary, found his favorite place for composing his verses in walking back and forth upon the smooth paths of his garden, among flowers and creeping vines. Hazlitt, in a critical analysis of the two poets, traces a likeness to the style of each in his choice of exercise while maturing his thoughts, – which, it would seem to us, is a subtile deduction altogether too fine to signify anything.

Charles Dibdin, the famous London song-writer and musician, whose sea-songs as published number over a thousand, caught his ideas "on the fly." As an example, he was at a loss for something new to sing on a certain occasion. A friend was with him in his lodgings and suggested several themes. Suddenly the jar of a ladder against the street lamp-post under his window was heard. It was a hint to his fertile imagination, and Dibdin exclaimed, "The Lamplighter! That's it; first-rate idea!" and stepping to the piano he finished both song and words in an hour, and sang them in public with great éclat that very night, under the title of "Jolly Dick, the Lamplighter." Like nearly all such mercurial geniuses, Dibdin was generous, careless, and improvident in his habits, dying at last poor and neglected.

Dr. Johnson was so extremely short-sighted that writing, re-writing, and correcting upon paper were very inconvenient for him; he was therefore accustomed to revolve a subject very carefully in his mind, forming sentences and periods with minute care; and by means of his remarkable memory he retained them with great precision for use and final transmission to paper. When he began, therefore, with pen in hand, his production of copy was very rapid, and it required scarcely any corrections. Boswell says that posterity will be astonished when they are told that many of these discourses, which might be supposed to be labored with all the slow attention of literary leisure, were written in haste, as the moments pressed, without even being read over by Johnson before they were printed. Sir John Hawkins says that the original manuscripts of the "Rambler" passed through his hands, "and by the perusal of them I am warranted to say, as was said of Shakespeare by the players of his time, that he never blotted a line." Johnson tells us that he wrote the life of Savage in six-and-thirty hours. He also wrote his "Hermit of Teneriffe" in a single night. When we consider the amount of literary work performed by Johnson, say in the period of seven years, while "he sailed a long and painful voyage round the world of the English language," and produced his dictionary, we must give him credit for the most remarkable industry and great rapidity of production. During these seven years he found time also to complete his "Rambler," the "Vanity of Human Wishes," and his tragedy, besides several minor literary performances. No wonder he developed hypochondria. Burke was a very slow and painstaking producer; it is even said that he had all his works printed at a private press before submitting them to his publisher.

Hume was more rapid, even careless with his first edition of a work, but went on correcting each new one to the day of his death.[56 - When Hume was in Paris receiving the homage of the philosophers, three little boys were brought before him, who complimented him after the fashion of grown persons, expressing their admiration for his beautiful history. These children afterwards succeeded to the throne as Louis XVI., his brother, Louis XVIII., and Charles X.] Macaulay, in his elaborate speeches, did not write them out beforehand, but thought them out, trusting to his memory to recall every epigrammatic statement and every felicitous epithet which he had previously forged in his mind, so that when the time came for their delivery they appeared to spring forth as the spontaneous outpouring of his feelings and sentiments, excited by the questions discussed. Wendell Phillips followed a similar method.

Thomas Paine, the political and deistical writer, was under contract to furnish a certain amount of matter for each number of the "Pennsylvania Magazine." Aitken the publisher had great difficulty in getting him to fulfil his agreement. Paine's indolence was such that he was always behindhand with his engagements. Finally, after it had become too late to delay longer, Aitken would go to his house, tell him the printers were standing idle waiting for his copy, and insist upon his accompanying him to the office. Paine would do so, when pen, ink, and paper would be placed before him, and he would sit thoughtfully, but produce nothing until Aitken gave him a large glass of brandy. Even then he would delay. The publisher naturally feared to give him a second glass, thinking that it would disqualify him altogether, but, on the contrary, his brain seemed to be illumined by it, and when he had swallowed the third glass, – quite enough to have made Mr. Aitken dead drunk, – he would write with rapidity, intelligence, and precision, his ideas appearing to flow faster than he could express them on paper. The copy produced under the fierce stimulant was remarkable for correctness, and fit for the press without revision.[57 - This was the Tom Paine on whom was written one of the most felicitous of epitaphs: —]

Charlotte Bronté was a very slow producer of literary work, and was obliged to choose her special days. Often for a week, and sometimes longer, she could not write at all; her brain seemed to be dormant. Then, without any premonition or apparent inducing cause, she would awake in the morning, go to her writing-desk, and the ideas would come with more rapidity than she could pen them. Mrs. Gaskell the novelist, a friend of the Brontés, was exactly the opposite in her style of composition. She could sit down at any hour and lose herself in the process of the story she was composing. She was also a prolific authoress, of whom George Sand said: "She has done what neither I nor other female writers in France can accomplish; she has written novels which excite the deepest interest in men of the world, and which every girl will be the better for reading." Bacon[58 - Bacon was full of crotchets, so to speak. In spring, he would go out for a drive in an open coach while it rained, to receive "the benefit of irrigation," which, he contended, was "most wholesome because of the nitre in the air, and the universal spirit of the world." He had extraordinary notions and indulged them freely, such as dosing himself with chemicals, rhubarb, nitre, saffron, and many other medicines. At every meal his table was abundantly strewn with flowers and sweet herbs.] often had music played in the room adjoining his library, saying that he gathered inspiration from its strains. Warburton said music was always a necessity to him when engaged in intellectual labor. Curran, the great Irish barrister, had also his favorite mode of meditation; it was with his violin in hand. He would seem to forget himself, running voluntaries over the strings, while his imagination, collecting its tones, was kindling and invigorating all his faculties for the coming contest at the bar. Bishop Beveridge adopted Bacon's plan, and said, "When music sounds sweetest in my ears, truth commonly flows the clearest in my mind." Even the cold, passionless Carlyle said music was to him a kind of inarticulate speech which led him to the edge of the infinite, and permitted him for a moment to gaze into it.

John Foster, the English essayist, declared that the special quality of genius was "the power to light its own fire;" and certainly Sir Walter Scott was a shining example of this truth. Shelley, a poet of finer but less robust fibre, decided that "the mind, in creating, is as a fading coal, which some passing influence, like an invisible wind, wakens into momentary brightness."

As already remarked, ten years transpired between the first sketch of the "Traveller," which was made in Switzerland, and its publication; but the history of the "Vicar of Wakefield" was quite different. Goldsmith hastened the closing pages to raise money, being terribly pressed for the payment of numerous small bills, and also by his landlady for rent. He was actually under arrest for this last debt, and sent to Dr. Johnson to come to him at once. Understanding very well what was the trouble, Johnson sent him a guinea, and came in person as soon as he could. He found, on arriving, that Goldsmith had already broken the guinea and was drinking a bottle of wine purchased therewith. The Doctor put the cork into the bottle, and began to talk over the means of extricating the impecunious author from his troubles. Goldsmith told Johnson that he had just finished a small book, and wished he would look at it; perhaps it would bring in some money. He brought forth the manuscript of the "Vicar of Wakefield." Johnson hastily glanced over it, paused, read a chapter carefully, bade Goldsmith to be of good cheer, and hastened away with the new story to Newbury the publisher, who, solely on Johnson's recommendation, gave him sixty pounds for the manuscript and threw it into his desk, where it remained undisturbed for two years.[59 - It is curious that St. Pierre's story of Paul and Virginia, which has since proved one of the most popular tales ever written, was at first listened to by the author's friends so coldly that after it was finished he laid it by for months; but when it once got into print the public indorsed it immediately, and fresh editions followed each other in rapid succession.]

A voluminous writer once explained to Goldsmith the advantage of employing an amanuensis. "How do you manage it?" asked Goldsmith. "Why, I walk about the room and dictate to a clever man, who puts down very correctly all that I tell him, so that I have nothing to do but to look it over and send it to the printers." Goldsmith was delighted with the idea, and asked his friend to send the scribe to him. The next day the penman came with his implements, ready to catch his new employer's words and to record them. Goldsmith paced the room with great thoughtfulness, just as his friend had described to him, back and forth, back and forth, several times; but after racking his brain to no purpose for half an hour, he gave it up. He handed the scribe a guinea, saying, "It won't do, my friend; I find that my head and hand must work together."

Milton dictated that immortal poem, "Paradise Lost," his daughters being his amanuenses; but Milton was then blind. It is said of Julius Cæsar that while writing a despatch he could at the same time dictate seven letters to as many clerks. This seems almost miraculous; but in our own day Paul Morphy has performed quite as difficult a feat at chess, playing several games at once, blindfolded.

One of the most eminent and eloquent of American preachers and lecturers, Thomas Starr King, was accustomed to dictate to an amanuensis; but when a difficulty would occur in developing his thought, he would take the pen in his own hand, and, abstracting himself entirely from the wondering reporter by his side, would spend perhaps half an hour in deeper thinking and more exact expression than when he dictated. Those who have examined his manuscript since his death easily perceive that the portions of a sermon or a lecture which he personally wrote are better than those which he poured forth to his amanuensis as he walked the room. On one occasion a friend who was in favor of making the pen and brain work together went to hear Mr. King deliver a lecture on Pope Gregory VII. (Hildebrand), and at its conclusion told the lecturer that he could distinguish, without seeing the manuscript, the portions he wrote with his own hand from those he dictated. He succeeded so well, in the course of half an hour's conversation, as to surprise the orator by hitting on the passages in dispute, and proving his case.

To write an acceptable book, poem, or essay, is quite as much of a trade as to make a clock or shoe a horse. To produce easy-flowing sentences, as they finally appear before the reader's eye, has cost much careful thought, long and patient practice, and even with some famous authors, as we have seen, many hours of writing and re-writing. So far as it is applied to authorship, we are not surprised at Hogarth's remark: "I know no such thing as genius; genius is nothing but labor and diligence." Buffon's definition is nearly the same; he says, "Genius is only great patience." Authors are generally very commonplace representatives of humanity, and remarkably like the average citizen whom we meet in our daily walk. Rogers, in his "Table Talk," says: "When literature is the sole business of life, it becomes a drudgery; when we are able to resort to it only at certain hours, it is a charming relaxation. In my early years I was a banker's clerk, obliged to be at the desk every day from ten to five o'clock, and I shall never forget the delight with which, on returning home, I used to read and write during the evening." He was a great reader, but said that "a man who attempts to read all the new publications must often do as a flea does – skip."[60 - Poor, dear Rogers! Smith was disposed to be a little too hard on him. Some one having asked after Rogers's health in Smith's presence, he replied, "He's not very well." "Why, what's the matter?" rejoined the querist. "Oh, don't you know," said Smith, "he's produced a couplet;" and added: "When our friend is delivered of a couplet with infinite labor and pain, he takes to his bed, has straw laid down, the knocker tied up, expects his friends to call and make inquiries, and the answer at the door invariably is, 'Mr. Rogers and his little couplet are as well as can be expected'!"]

To recur to Charles Dickens, is it generally known that his favorite novel of "David Copperfield" partially relates to the history of his own boyhood? The story of David's employment, when a child, in washing and labelling blacking-bottles in a London cellar, was true of Dickens himself. If it were possible to read between the lines, we should not infrequently find the most effective narrative sketches little less than biography or autobiography. Thackeray and Dickens both wrote under the thin gauze of fiction. "Vivian Gray" is but a photograph of its dilettante author; and every character drawn by Charlotte Bronté is a true portrait, all being confined within so small a circle as to be easily recognizable. Smollett sat for his own personality in that of Roderick Random; while Scott drew many of his most strongly individualized characters, like that of Dominie Sampson, from people in his immediate circle.

Coleridge says of Milton: "In 'Paradise Lost,' indeed in every one of his poems, it is Milton himself whom you see. His Satan, his Adam, his Raphael, almost his Eve, are all John Milton; and it is a sense of this intense egotism that gives one the greatest pleasure in reading Milton's works." It is well known that many of Byron's[61 - That excellent and conservative critic, Epes Sargent, says of the author of "Don Juan," "He may have been overrated in his day; but his place in English literature must ever be in the front rank of the immortals." "Byron," said Emerson once, "had large utterance, but little to say," – a half-truth pointedly expressed; but, alluding to Byron's poems in his later life, acknowledging their captivating energy, Emerson denied having uttered, even in conversation, so derogatory a remark of him who was, with all his limitations, a bard palpably inspired.] poetical plots are almost literally his personal experiences. This was especially the case as to the "Giaour." A beautiful female slave was thrown into the sea for infidelity, and was terribly avenged by her lover, while Byron was in the East; being impressed with the dramatic character of the tragedy, he gave it expression in a poem. Carlyle says that Satan was Byron's grand exemplar, the hero of his poetry, and the model, apparently, of his conduct. In Bulwer-Lytton's "Disowned," one of his earliest and best stories, the hero, Clarence Linden, a youth of eighteen, while journeying as a pedestrian, makes the acquaintance of a free-and-easy person named Cole, – a gypsy king, – in whose camp he passes the night: all of which was an actual experience of Bulwer himself. Hans Christian Andersen gives us many of his personal experiences in his popular tale, "Only a Fiddler;" so is "Gilbert Gurney," a novel by Theodore Hook, a biography of himself as a practical joker. It will thus be seen that authors do not always draw entirely upon the imagination for incidents, characters, and plot, but that there is from first to last a large amount of actual truth in seeming fiction.

When Goldsmith was a lad of fifteen or there-about, some one gave him a guinea, with which, and a borrowed horse, he set out for a holiday trip. He got belated when returning, and, inquiring of a stranger if he would point out to him a house of entertainment, was mischievously directed to the residence of the sheriff of the county. Here he knocked lustily at the door, and sending his horse to the stable, ordered a good supper, inviting the "landlord" to drink a bottle of wine with him. The next morning, after an ample breakfast, he offered his guinea in payment, when the squire, who knew Goldsmith's family, overwhelmed him with confusion by telling him the truth. Thirty years afterwards Goldsmith availed himself of this humiliating blunder at the time he wrote that popular comedy, "She Stoops to Conquer." When Goldsmith was talking to a friend of writing a fable in which little fishes were to be introduced, Dr. Johnson, who was present, laughed rather sneeringly. "Why do you laugh?" asked Goldsmith, angrily. "If you were to write a fable of little fishes, you would make them speak like whales!" The justice of the reproof was perfectly apparent to Johnson, who was conscious of Goldsmith's superior inventiveness, lightness, and grace of composition.

Speaking of authors writing from their own personal experience recalls a name which we must not neglect to mention. Laurence Sterne, author of "Tristram Shandy," various volumes of sermons, the "Sentimental Journey," etc., was a curious compound in character, but possessed of real genius. He was quite a sentimentalist in his writings, and those who did not know him personally would accredit him with possessing a tender heart. The fact was, however, as Horace Walpole said of him, "He had too much sentiment to have any feeling." His mother, who had run in debt on account of an extravagant daughter, would have been permitted to remain indefinitely in jail, but for the kindness of the parents of her pupils. Her son Laurence heeded her not. "A dead ass was more important to him than a living mother," says Walpole. Sterne also used his wife very ill. One day he was talking to Garrick in a fine sentimental manner in praise of conjugal love and fidelity. "The husband," said Sterne, "who behaves unkindly to his wife, deserves to have his house burned over his head." Garrick's reply was only just: "If you think so, I hope your house is insured." He is known to have been engaged to a Miss Fourmantel for five years, and then to have jilted her so cruelly that she ended her days in a mad-house. Such was the great Laurence Sterne. It was poetical justice that he should repent at leisure of his subsequent hasty marriage to one whom he had known only four weeks. He twice visited the lady whom he had deceived, in the establishment where she was confined; and the character of Maria, whom he so pathetically describes, is drawn from her, showing how cheaply he could coin his pretended feelings. Contradictions in character are often ludicrous, and go to show that the author and the man are seldom one. What can be more contradictory in the nature of the same individual than Sterne whining over a dead ass and neglecting to relieve a living mother; or Prior addressing the most romantic sonnets to his Chloe, and at the same time indulging a sentimental passion for a barmaid?

Goldsmith's "Deserted Village," according to Mr. Best, an Irish clergyman, relates to the scenes in which Goldsmith was himself an actor. Auburn is a poetical name for the village of Lissoy, county of Westneath. The name of the schoolmaster was Paddy Burns. "I remember him well," says Mr. Best; "he was indeed a man severe to view. A woman called Walsey Cruse kept the ale-house. I have often been within it. The hawthorn bush was remarkably large, and stood in front of the ale-house." The author of the "Deserted Village," however, made his best contemporary "hit" with his poem of the "Traveller." He always distrusted his poetic ability, and this poem was kept on hand some years after it was completed, before he published it in 1764. It passed through several editions in the first year, and proved a golden harvest to Newbury the publisher; but Goldsmith received only twenty guineas for the manuscript.

The character of Sober, in Johnson's "Idler," is a portrait of himself; and he admitted more than once that he had his own outset in life in his mind when he wrote the Eastern story of "Gelaleddin." Is not "Tristram Shandy" a synonym for its author, Sterne? Hazlitt and many others fuse the personality of the author of the "Imaginary Conversations" with this admirable work from his pen: certainly a high compliment to Landor, if the portraiture is a likeness. Walter Savage Landor[62 - "I had learned from his works," remarks Lady Blessington, after meeting Landor at Florence, in May, 1825, "to form a high opinion of the man as well as the author. But I was not prepared to find in him the courtly, polished gentleman of high breeding, of manners, deportment, and demeanor, that one might expect to meet with in one who had passed the greater part of his life in courts."] was a most erratic genius, a man of uncontrollable passions which led him into constant difficulties; at times he must have been partially deranged. In all his productions he exhibits high literary culture; and being born to a fortune, he was enabled to adapt himself to his most fastidious tastes, though in the closing years of his life, having lost his money, he learned the meaning of that bitter word dependence. The severest critic must accord him the genius of a poet; but his literar reputation will rest upon his elaborate prose work, "Imaginary Conversations" of literary men and statesmen, upon which he was engaged for more than ten years. He lived to the age of ninety, and found solace in his pen to the last.

CHAPTER III

As we have already remarked, authors are very much like other people, rarely coming up to the idea formed of them by enthusiastic readers. They are pretty sure to have some idiosyncrasies more or less peculiar; and who, indeed, has not? To know the true character of these individuals, we should see them in their homes rather than in their books.

Having so lately spoken of Landor, we are reminded of another literary character who in many respects resembled him. William Beckford, the English author, utterly despised literary fame, and when he wrote he could afford to do so, for he was a millionnaire. His romance of "Vathek," as an Eastern tale, was pronounced by the critics superior to "Rasselas;" and indeed "Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia," is hardly in any sense an Eastern tale. "Johnson," says Macaulay, "not content with turning filthy savages, ignorant of their letters and gorged with raw steaks cut from living cows, into philosophers as eloquent and enlightened as himself or his friend Burke, and into ladies as accomplished as Mrs. Lennox or Mrs. Sheridan, transferred the whole domestic system of England to Egypt." Beckford read to Rogers one of his novels in which the hero was a Frenchman who was ridiculously fond of dogs, and in which his own life was clearly depicted. Even this millionnaire author was finally reduced to such necessity as obliged him to sell his private pictures for subsistence. The last which he disposed of was Bellini's portrait of the "Doge of Venice," which was bought for and hung in the National Gallery on the very day that Beckford died, in 1844.

Certainly those authors who give us their own personal experience as a basis for their sketches are no plagiarists. The late Wendell Phillips[63 - This man scornfully renounces your civil organizations, – county and city, or governor or army; is his own navy and artillery, judge and jury, legislature and executive. He has learned his lessons in a bitter school. —Emerson.] delighted, in his lecture on the "Lost Arts," to prove that there was nothing new under the sun; a not uncongenial task for this "silver-tongued orator," who was an iconoclast by nature. So early as the age of twenty-five he relinquished the practice of the law because he was unwilling to act under an oath to the Constitution of the United States. In one sense there is nothing new under the sun. Genius has not hesitated to borrow bravely from history and legend. The "Amphitrion" of Molière was adopted from Plautus, who had borrowed it from the Greeks, and they from the Indians. Any one reading a collection of the Arabian stories for the first time will be surprised at meeting so many which are familiar, and which he had thought to be of modern birth. La Fontaine borrowed from Petronius the "Ephesian Matron," which had been taken from Greek annals, having been previously transferred from the Arabic, where it appeared taken from the Chinese. There is no ignoring the fact that a large portion of our plots belonged originally to Eastern nations. The graceful, attractive, and patriotic story of William Tell was proven by the elder son of Haller, a century ago, to have been, in the main features, but the revival of a Danish story to be found in Saxo Grammaticus. The interesting legend of the apple was but a fable revived. The English story of Whittington and his Cat was common two thousand years ago in Persia.