Hyperion Part 3

"I remember an old English comedy," said Flemming laughing, "in which a scholar is described, as a creature, that can strike fire in the morning at his tinder-box,--put on a pair of lined slippers,--sit ruminating till dinner, and then go to his meat when the bell rings;--one that hath a peculiar gift in a cough, and a license to spit;--or, if you will have him defined by negatives, he is one that cannot make a good leg;--one that cannot eat a mess of broth cleanly. What think you of that?"

"That it is just as people are always represented in English comedy," said the Baron. "The portrait is over-charged,--caricatured."

"And yet," continued Flemming, "no longer ago than yesterday, in the Preface of a work by Dr. Rosenkranz, Professor of Philosophy in the University of Halle, I read this pa.s.sage."

He opened a book and read.

"Here in Halle, where we have no public garden and no Tivoli, no London Exchange, no Paris Chamber of Deputies, no Berlin nor Vienna Theatres, no Stra.s.sburg Minster, nor Salzburg Alps,--no Grecian ruins nor fantastic Catholicism, in fine, nothing, which after one's daily task is finished, can divert and refresh him, without his knowing or caring how,--I consider the sight of a proof-sheet quite as delightful as a walk in the Prater of Vienna. I fill my pipe very quietly, take out my ink-stand and pens, seat myself in the corner of my sofa, read, correct, and now for the first time really set about thinking what I have written. To see this origin of a book, this metamorphosis of ma.n.u.script into print, is a delight to which I give myself up entirely. Look you, this melancholy pleasure, which would have furnished the departed Voss with worthy matter for more than one blessed Idyl--(the more so, as on such occasions, I am generally arrayed in a morning gown, though I am sorry to say, not a calamanco one, with great flowers;) this melancholy pleasure was already grown here in Halle to a sweet, pedantic habit. Since I began my hermit's life here, I have been printing; and so long as I remain here, I shall keep on printing. In all probability, I shall die with a proof-sheet in my hand."

"This," said Flemming, closing the book, "is no caricature by a writer of comedy, but a portrait by a man's own hand. We can see by it how easily, under certain circ.u.mstances, one may glide into habits of seclusion, and in a kind of undress, slipshod hardihood, with a pipe and a proof-sheet, defy the world. Into this state scholars have too often fallen; thus giving some ground for the prevalent opinion, that scholarship and rusticity are inseparable.

To me, I confess, it is painful to see the scholar and the world a.s.sume so often a hostile att.i.tude, and set each other at defiance.

Surely, it is a characteristic trait of a great and liberal mind, that it recognises humanity in all its forms and conditions. I am a student;--and always, when I sit alone at night, I recognise the divinity of the student, as she reveals herself to me in the smoke of the midnight lamp. But, because solitude and books are not unpleasant to me,--nay, wished-for,--sought after,--shall I say to my brother, Thou fool! Shall I take the world by the beard and say, Thou art old, and mad!--Shall I look society in the face and say, Thou art heartless!--Heartless! Beware of that word! Life, says very wisely the good Jean Paul, Life in every shape, should be precious to us, for the same reason that the Turks carefully collect every sc.r.a.p of paper that comes in their way, because the name of G.o.d may be written upon it. Nothing is more true than this, yet nothing more neglected!"

"If it be painful to see this misunderstanding between scholars and the world," said the Baron, "I think it is still more painful to see the private sufferings of authors by profession. How many have languished in poverty, how many died broken-hearted, how many gone mad with over-excitement and disappointed hopes! How instructive and painfully interesting are their lives! with so many weaknesses,--so much to pardon,--so much to pity,--so much to admire! I think he was not so far out of the way, who said, that, next to the Newgate Calendar, the Biography of Authors is the most sickening chapter in the history of man."

"It is indeed enough to make one's heart ache!" interrupted Flemming. "Only think of Johnson and Savage, rambling about the streets of London at midnight, without a place to sleep in; Otway starved to death; Cowley mad, and howling like a dog, through the aisles of Chichester Cathedral, at the sound of church music; and Goldsmith, strutting up Fleet Street in his peach-blossom coat, to knock a bookseller over the pate with one of his own volumes; and then, in his poverty, about to marry his landlady in Green Arbour Court."

"A life of sorrow and privation, a hard life, indeed, do these poor devil authors have of it," replied the Baron; "and then at last must get them to the work-house, or creep away into some hospital to die."

"After all," said Flemming with a sigh, "poverty is not a vice."

"But something worse," interrupted the Baron; "as Dufresny said, when he married his laundress, because he could not pay her bill.

Hewas the author, as you know, of the opera of Lot; at whose representation the great pun was made;--I say the great pun, as we say the great ton of Heidelberg. As one of the performers was singing the line, 'L'amour a vaincu Loth,' (vingt culottes,) a voice from the pit cried out, 'Qu'il en donne une a l'auteur!'"

Flemming laughed at the unseasonable jest; and then, after a short pause, continued;

"And yet, if you look closely at the causes of these calamities of authors, you will find, that many of them spring from false and exaggerated ideas of poetry and the poetic character; and from disdain of common sense, upon which all character, worth having, is founded. This comes from keeping aloof from the world, apart from our fellow-men; disdainful of society, as frivolous. By too much sitting still the body becomes unhealthy; and soon the mind. This is nature's law. She will never see her children wronged. If the mind, which rules the body, ever forgets itself so far as to trample upon its slave, the slave is never generousenough to forgive the injury; but will rise and smite its oppressor. Thus has many a monarch mind been dethroned."

"After all," said the Baron, "we must pardon much to men of genius. A delicate organization renders them keenly susceptible to pain and pleasure. And then they idealize every thing; and, in the moonlight of fancy, even the deformity of vice seems beautiful."

"And this you think should be forgiven?"

"At all events it is forgiven. The world loves a spice of wickedness. Talk as you will about principle, impulse is more attractive, even when it goes too far. The pa.s.sions of youth, like unhooded hawks, fly high, with musical bells upon their jesses; and we forget the cruelty of the sport in the dauntless bearing of the gallant bird."

"And thus doth the world and society corrupt the scholar!"

exclaimed Flemming.

Here the Baron rang, and ordered a bottle of Prince Metternich.

He then very slowly filled his pipe, and began to smoke. Flemming was lost in a day-dream.

CHAPTER VIII. LITERARY FAME.

Time has a Doomsday-Book, upon whose pages he is continually recording ill.u.s.trious names. But, as often as a new name is written there, an old one disappears. Only a few stand in illuminated characters, never to be effaced. These are the high n.o.bility of Nature,--Lords of the Public Domain of Thought. Posterity shall never question their t.i.tles. But those, whose fame lives only in the indiscreet opinion of unwise men, must soon be as well forgotten, as if they had never been. To this great oblivion must most men come.

It is better, therefore, that they should soon make up their minds to this; well knowing, that, as their bodies must ere long be resolved into dust again, and their graves tell no tales of them; so musttheir names likewise be utterly forgotten, and their most cherished thoughts, purposes, and opinions have no longer an individual being among men; but be resolved and incorporated into the universe of thought. If, then, the imagination can trace the n.o.ble dust of heroes, till we find it stopping a beer-barrel, and know that

"Imperial Caesar, dead and turned to clay,

May stop a hole to keep the wind away;"

not less can it trace the n.o.ble thoughts of great men, till it finds them mouldered into the common dust of conversation, and used to stop men's mouths, and patch up theories, to keep out the flaws of opinion. Such, for example, are all popular adages and wise proverbs, which are now resolved into the common ma.s.s of thought; their authors forgotten, and having no more an individual being among men.

It is better, therefore, that men should soon make up their minds to be forgotten, and look about them, or within them, for some higher motive, in what they do, than the approbation of men, which is Fame; namely, their duty; that they should be constantly and quietly at work, each in his sphere, regardless of effects, and leaving their fame to take care of itself. Difficult must this indeed be, in our imperfection; impossible perhaps to achieve it wholly. Yet the resolute, the indomitable will of man can achieve much,--at times even this victory over himself; being persuaded, that fame comes only when deserved, and then is as inevitable as destiny, for it is destiny.

It has become a common saying, that men of genius are always in advance of their age; which is true. There is something equally true, yet not so common; namely, that, of these men of genius, the best and bravest are in advance not only of their own age, but of every age. As the German prose-poet says, every possible future is behind them. We cannot suppose, that a period of time will ever come, when the world, or any considerable portion of it shall have come up abreast with these great minds, so as fully to comprehend them.

And oh! how majestically they walk in history; some like the sun, with all his travelling glories round him; others wrapped in gloom, yet glorious as a night with stars. Through the else silent darkness of the past, the spirit hears their slow and solemn footsteps.

Onward they pa.s.s, like those h.o.a.ry elders seen in the sublime vision of an earthly Paradise, attendant angels bearing golden lights before them, and, above and behind, the whole air painted with seven listed colors, as from the trail of pencils!

And yet, on earth, these men were not happy,--not all happy, in the outward circ.u.mstance of their lives. They were in want, and in pain, and familiar with prison-bars, and the damp, weeping walls of dungeons! Oh, I have looked with wonder upon those, who, in sorrow and privation, and bodily discomfort, and sickness, which is the shadow of death, have worked right on to the accomplishment of their great purposes; toiling much, enduring much, fulfilling much;--and then, with shattered nerves, and sinews all unstrung, have laid themselves down in the grave, and slept the sleep of death,--and the world talks of them, while they sleep!

It would seem, indeed, as if all their sufferings had but sanctified them! As if the death-angel, in pa.s.sing, had touched them with the hem of his garment, and made them holy! As if the hand of disease had been stretched out over them only to make the sign of the cross upon their souls! And as in the sun's eclipse we can behold the great stars shining in the heavens, so in this life eclipse have these men beheld the lights of the great eternity, burning solemnly and forever!

This was Flemming's reverie. It was broken by the voice of the Baron, suddenly exclaiming;

"An angel is flying over the house!--Here; in this goblet, fragrant as the honey of Hymettus, fragrant as the wild flowers in the Angel's Meadow, I drink to the divinity of thy dreams."

"This is all sunshine," said Flemming, as he drank. "The wine of the Prince, and the Prince of wines. By the way, did you ever read that brilliant Italian dithyrambic, Redi's Bacchus in Tuscany? an ode which seems to have been poured out of the author's soul, as from a golden pitcher,

'Filled with the wine

Of the vine

Benign,

That flames so red in Sansavine.'

He calls the Montepulciano the king of all wines."

"Prince Metternich," said the Baron, "is greater than any king in Italy; and I wonder, that this precious wine has never inspired a German poet to write a Bacchus on the Rhine. Many little songs we have on this theme, but none very extraordinary. The best are Max Schenkendorf's Song of the Rhine, and the Song of Rhine Wine, by Claudius, a poet who never drank Rhenish without sugar. We will drink for him a blessing on the Rhine."

And again the crystal lips of the goblets kissed each other, with a musical chime, as of evening bells at vintage-time from the villages on the Rhine. Of a truth, I do not much wonder, that the Germanpoet Schiller loved to write by candle-light with a bottle of Rhine-wine upon the table. Nor do I wonder at the worthy schoolmaster Roger Ascham, when he says, in one of his letters from Germany to Mr. John Raven, of John's College; 'Tell Mr. Maden I will drink with him now a carouse of wine; and would to G.o.d he had a vessel of Rhenish wine; and perchance, when I come to Cambridge, I will so provide here, that every year I will have a little piece of Rhenish wine.' Nor, in fine, do I wonder at the German Emperor of whom he speaks in another letter to the same John Raven, and says, 'The Emperor drank the best that I ever saw; he had his head in the gla.s.s five times as long as any of us, and never drank less than a good quart at once of Rhenish wine.' These were scholars and gentlemen.

"But to resume our old theme of scholars and their whereabout,"

said the Baron, with an unusual glow, caught no doubt from the golden sunshine, imprisoned, like the student Anselmus, in the gla.s.s bottle; "where should the scholar live? In solitudeor in society? In the green stillness of the country, where he can hear the heart of nature beat, or in the dark, gray city, where he can hear and feel the throbbing heart of man? I will make answer for him, and say, in the dark, gray city. Oh, they do greatly err, who think, that the stars are all the poetry which cities have; and therefore that the poet's only dwelling should be in sylvan solitudes, under the green roof of trees. Beautiful, no doubt, are all the forms of Nature, when transfigured by the miraculous power of poetry; hamlets and harvest-fields, and nut-brown waters, flowing ever under the forest, vast and shadowy, with all the sights and sounds of rural life. But after all, what are these but the decorations and painted scenery in the great theatre of human life? What are they but the coa.r.s.e materials of the poet's song? Glorious indeed is the world of G.o.d around us, but more glorious the world of G.o.d within us. There lies the Land of Song; there lies the poet's native land. The river of life, that flows through streets tumultuous, bearingalong so many gallant hearts, so many wrecks of humanity;--the many homes and households, each a little world in itself, revolving round its fireside, as a central sun; all forms of human joy and suffering, brought into that narrow compa.s.s;--and to be in this and be a part of this; acting, thinking, rejoicing, sorrowing, with his fellow-men;--such, such should be the poet's life. If he would describe the world, he should live in the world. The mind of the scholar, also, if you would have it large and liberal, should come in contact with other minds. It is better that his armour should be somewhat bruised even by rude encounters, than hang forever rusting on the wall. Nor will his themes be few or trivial, because apparently shut in between the walls of houses, and having merely the decorations of street scenery. A ruined character is as picturesque as a ruined castle. There are dark abysses and yawning gulfs in the human heart, which can be rendered pa.s.sable only by bridging them over with iron nerves and sinews, as Challey bridged the Savine in Switzerland, and Telford the sea between Anglesea and England, with chain bridges. These are the great themes of human thought; not green gra.s.s, and flowers, and moonshine. Besides, the mere external forms of Nature we make our own, and carry with us into the city, by the power of memory."

"I fear, however," interrupted Flemming, "that in cities the soul of man grows proud. He needs at times to be sent forth, like the a.s.syrian monarch, into green fields, 'a wonderous wretch and weedless,' to eat green herbs, and be wakened and chastised by the rain-shower and winter's bitter weather. Moreover, in cities there is danger of the soul's becoming wed to pleasure, and forgetful of its high vocation. There have been souls dedicated to heaven from childhood and guarded by good angels as sweet seclusions for holy thoughts, and prayers, and all good purposes; wherein pious wishes dwelt like nuns, and every image was a saint; and yet in life's vicissitudes, by the treachery of occasion, by the thronging pa.s.sionsof great cities, have become soiled and sinful. They resemble those convents on the river Rhine, which have been changed to taverns; from whose chambers the pious inmates have long departed, and in whose cloisters the footsteps of travellers have effaced the images of buried saints, and whose walls are written over with ribaldry and the names of strangers, and resound no more with holy hymns, but with revelry and loud voices."

"Both town and country have their dangers," said the Baron; "and therefore, wherever the scholar lives, he must never forget his high vocation. Other artists give themselves up wholly to the study of their art. It becomes with them almost religion. For the most part, and in their youth, at least, they dwell in lands, where the whole atmosphere of the soul is beauty; laden with it as the air may be with vapor, till their very nature is saturated with the genius of their art. Such, for example, is the artist's life in Italy."

"I agree with you," exclaimed Flemming; "and such should be the Poet's everywhere; forhe has his Rome, his Florence, his whole glowing Italy within the four walls of his library. He has in his books the ruins of an antique world,--and the glories of a modern one,--his Apollo and Transfiguration. He must neither forget nor undervalue his vocation; but thank G.o.d that he is a poet; and everywhere be true to himself, and to 'the vision and the faculty divine' he feels within him."

"But, at any rate, a city life is most eventful," continued the Baron. "The men who make, or take, the lives of poets and scholars, always complain that these lives are barren of incidents. Hardly a literary biography begins without some such apology, unwisely made.

I confess, however, that it is not made without some show of truth; if, by incidents, we mean only those startling events, which suddenly turn aside the stream of Time, and change the world's history in an hour. There is certainly a uniformity, pleasing or unpleasing, in literary life, which for the most part makes to-day seem twin-born with yesterday. But if, byincidents, you mean events in the history of the human mind, (and why not?) noiseless events, that do not scar the forehead of the world as battles do, yet change it not the less, then surely the lives of literary men are most eventful. The complaint and the apology are both foolish. I do not see why a successful book is not as great an event as a successful campaign; only different in kind, and not easily compared."