Literary Character of Men of Genius Part 17

[Footnote A: See what is said on this subject in the article on Sterne in the "Literary Miscellanies," of the present volume.]

And thus also is it with the personal dispositions of an author, which may be quite the reverse from those which appear in his writings. Johnson would not believe that HORACE was a happy man because his verses were cheerful, any more than he could think POPE so, because the poet is continually informing us of it. It surprised Spence when Pope told him that ROWE, the tragic poet, whom he had considered so solemn a personage, "would laugh all day long, and do nothing else but laugh." Lord Kaimes says, that ARBUTHNOT must have been a great genius, for he exceeded Swift and Addison in humorous painting; although we are informed he had nothing of that peculiarity in his character. YOUNG, who is constantly contemning preferment in his writings, was all his life pining after it; and the conversation of the sombrous author of the "Night Thoughts" was of the most volatile kind, abounding with trivial puns. He was one of the first who subscribed to the a.s.sembly at Wellwyn. Mrs. Carter, who greatly admired his sublime poetry, expressing her surprise at his social converse, he replied, "Madam, there is much difference between writing and talking."

MOLIERE, on the contrary, whose humour is so perfectly comic, and even ludicrous, was thoughtful and serious, and even melancholy. His strongly-featured physiognomy exhibits the face of a great tragic, rather than of a great comic, poet. Boileau called Moliere "The Contemplative Man." Those who make the world laugh often themselves laugh the least. A famous and witty harlequin of France was overcome with hypochondriasm, and consulted a physician, who, after inquiring about his malady, told his miserable patient, that he knew of no other medicine for him than to take frequent doses of Carlin--"I am Carlin himself," exclaimed the melancholy man, in despair. BURTON, the pleasant and vivacious author of "The Anatomy of Melancholy," of whom it is noticed, that he could in an interval of vapours raise laughter in any company, in his chamber was "mute and mopish," and at last was so overcome by that intellectual disorder, which he appeared to have got rid of by writing his volume, that it is believed he closed his life in a fit of melancholy.[A]

[Footnote A: It is reported of him that his only mode of alleviating his melancholy was by walking from his college at Oxford to the bridge, to listen to the rough jokes of the bargemen.]

Could one have imagined that the brilliant wit, the luxuriant raillery, and the fine and deep sense of PASCAL, could have combined with the most opposite qualities--the hypochondriasm and bigotry of an ascetic?

ROCHEFOUCAULD, in private life, was a conspicuous example of all those moral qualities of which he seemed to deny the existence, and exhibited in this respect a striking contrast to the Cardinal de Retz, who has presumed to censure him for his want of faith in the reality of virtue; but DE RETZ himself was the unbeliever in disinterested virtue. This great genius was one of those pretended patriots dest.i.tute of a single one of the virtues for which he was the clamorous advocate of faction.

When Valincour attributed the excessive tenderness in the tragedies of RACINE to the poet's own impa.s.sioned character, the son amply showed that his father was by no means the slave of love. RACINE never wrote a single love-poem, nor even had a mistress; and his wife had never read his tragedies, for poetry was not her delight. Racine's motive for making love the constant source of action in his tragedies, was from the principle which has influenced so many poets, who usually conform to the prevalent taste of the times. In the court of a young monarch it was necessary that heroes should be lovers; Corneille had n.o.bly run in one career, and Racine could not have existed as a great poet had he not rivalled him in an opposite one. The tender RACINE was no lover; but he was a subtle and epigrammatic observer, before whom his convivial friends never cared to open their minds; and the caustic BOILEAU truly said of him, "RACINE is far more malicious than I am."

ALFIERI speaks of his mistress as if he lived with her in the most unreserved familiarity; the reverse was the case. And the grat.i.tude and affection with which he describes his mother, and which she deserved, entered so little into his habitual feelings, that, after their early separation, he never saw her but once, though he often pa.s.sed through the country where she resided.

JOHNSON has composed a beautiful Rambler, describing the pleasures which result from the influence of good-humour; and somewhat remarkably says, "Without good-humour learning and bravery can be only formidable, and confer that superiority which swells the heart of the lion in the desert, where he roars without reply, and ravages without resistance." He who could so finely discover the happy influence of this pleasing quality was himself a stranger to it, and "the roar and the ravage" were familiar to our lion. Men of genius frequently subst.i.tute their beautiful imagination for spontaneous and natural sentiment. It is not therefore surprising if we are often erroneous in the conception we form of the personal character of a distant author. KLOPSTOCK, the votary of the muse of Zion, so astonished and warmed the sage BODMER, that he invited the inspired bard to his house: but his visitor shocked the grave professor, when, instead of a poet rapt in silent meditation, a volatile youth leaped out of the chaise, who was an enthusiast for retirement only when writing verses. An artist, whose pictures exhibit a series of scenes of domestic tenderness, awakening all the charities of private life, I have heard, partic.i.p.ated in them in no other way than on his canvas. EVELYN, who has written in favour of active life, "loved and lived in retirement;"[A] while Sir GEORGE MACKENZIE, who had been continually in the bustle of business, framed a eulogium on solitude. We see in MACHIAVEL'S code of tyranny, of depravity, and of criminal violence, a horrid picture of human nature; but this retired philosopher was a friend to the freedom of his country; he partic.i.p.ated in none of the crimes he had recorded, but drew up these systemized crimes "as an observer, not as a criminal." DRUMMOND, whose sonnets still retain the beauty and the sweetness and the delicacy of the most amiable imagination, was a man of a harsh irritable temper, and has been thus characterised:--

Testie Drummond could not speak for fretting.

[Footnote A: Since this was written the correspondence of EVELYN has appeared, by which we find that he apologised to Cowley for having published this very treatise, which seemed to condemn that life of study and privacy to which they were both equally attached; and confesses that the whole must be considered as a mere sportive effusion, requesting that Cowley would not suppose its principles formed his private opinions. Thus LEIBNITZ, we are told, laughed at the fanciful system revealed in his _Theodicee_, and acknowledged that he never wrote it in earnest; that a philosopher is not always obliged to write seriously, and that to invent an hypothesis is only a proof of the force of imagination.]

Thus authors and artists may yield no certain indication of their personal characters in their works. Inconstant men will write on constancy, and licentious minds may elevate themselves into poetry and piety. We should be unjust to some of the greatest geniuses if the extraordinary sentiments which they put into the mouths of their dramatic personages are maliciously to be applied to themselves. EURIPIDES was accused of atheism when he introduced a denier of the G.o.ds on the stage. MILTON has been censured by CLARKE for the impiety of Satan; and an enemy of SHAKSPEARE might have reproached him for his perfect delineation of the accomplished villain Iago, as it was said that Dr. MOORE was hurt in the opinions of some by his odious Zeluco. CREBILLON complains of this:--"They charge me with all the iniquities of Atreus, and they consider me in some places as a wretch with whom it is unfit to a.s.sociate; as if all which the mind invents must be derived from the heart." This poet offers a striking instance of the little alliance existing between the literary and personal dispositions of an author. CREBILLON, who exulted, on his entrance into the French Academy, that he had never tinged his pen with the gall of satire, delighted to strike on the most harrowing string of the tragic lyre. In his _Atreus_ the father drinks the blood of his son; in his _Rhadamistus_ the son expires under the hand of the father; in his _Electra_, the son a.s.sa.s.sinates the mother. A poet is a painter of the soul, but a great artist is not therefore a bad man.

MONTAIGNE appears to have been sensible of this fact in the literary character. Of authors, he says, he likes to read their little anecdotes and private pa.s.sions:--"Car j'ai une singuliere curiosite de connaitre l'ame et les nafs jugemens de mes auteurs. Il faut bien juger leur suffisance, mais non pas leurs moeurs, ni eux, par cette montre de leurs ecrits qu'ils etalent au theatre du monde." Which may be thus translated: "For I have a singular curiosity to know the soul and simple opinions of my authors. We must judge of their ability, but not of their manners, nor of themselves, by that show of their writings which they display on the theatre of the world." This is very just; are we yet sure, however, that the simplicity of this old favourite of Europe might not have been as much a theatrical gesture as the sentimentality of Sterne? The great authors of the Port-Royal Logic have raised severe objections to prove that MONTAIGNE was not quite so open in respect to those simple details which he imagined might diminish his personal importance with his readers. He pretends that he reveals all his infirmities and weaknesses, while he is perpetually pa.s.sing himself off for something more than he is. He carefully informs us that he has "a page," the usual attendant of an independent gentleman, and lives in an old family chateau; when the fact was, that his whole revenue did not exceed six thousand livres, a state beneath mediocrity. He is also equally careful not to drop any mention of his having a _clerk with a bag_; for he was a counsellor of Bordeaux, but affected the gentleman and the soldier. He trumpets himself forth for having been _mayor_ of Bordeaux, as this offered an opportunity of telling us that he succeeded _Marshal_ Biron, and resigned it to _Marshal_ Matignon. Could he have discovered that any _marshal_ had been a _lawyer_ he would not have sunk that part of his life. Montaigne himself has said, "that in forming a judgment of a man's life, particular regard should be paid to his behaviour at the end of it;" and he more than once tells us that the chief study of his life is to die calm and silent; and that he will plunge himself headlong and stupidly into death, as into an obscure abyss, which swallows one up in an instant; that to die was the affair of a moment's suffering, and required no precepts. He talked of reposing on the "pillow of doubt." But how did this great philosopher die? He called for the more powerful opiates of the infallible church! The ma.s.s was performed in his chamber, and, in rising to embrace it, his hands dropped and failed him; thus, as Professor Dugald Stewart observes on this philosopher--"He expired in performing what his old preceptor, Buchanan, would not have scrupled to describe as an act of idolatry."

We must not then consider that he who paints vice with energy is therefore vicious, lest we injure an honourable man; nor must we imagine that he who celebrates virtue is therefore virtuous, for we may then repose on a heart which knowing the right pursues the wrong.

These paradoxical appearances in the history of genius present a curious moral phenomenon. Much must be attributed to the plastic nature of the versatile faculty itself. Unquestionably many men of genius have often resisted the indulgence of one talent to exercise another with equal power; and some, who have solely composed sermons, could have touched on the foibles of society with the spirit of Horace or Juvenal. BLACKSTONE and Sir WILLIAM JONES directed that genius to the austere studies of law and philology, which might have excelled in the poetical and historical character. So versatile is this faculty of genius, that its possessors are sometimes uncertain of the manner in which they shall treat their subject, whether gravely or ludicrously. When BREBOEUF, the French translator of the Pharsalia of Lucan, had completed the first book as it now appears, he at the same time composed a burlesque version, and sent both to the great arbiter of taste in that day, to decide which the poet should continue. The decision proved to be difficult. Are there not writers who, with all the vehemence of genius, by adopting one principle can make all things shrink into the pigmy form of ridicule, or by adopting another principle startle us by the gigantic monsters of their own exaggerated imagination? On this principle, of the versatility of the faculty, a production of genius is a piece of art which, wrought up to its full effect with a felicity of manner acquired by taste and habit, is merely the result of certain arbitrary combinations of the mind.

Are we then to reduce the works of a man of genius to a mere sport of his talents--a game in which he is only the best player? Can he whose secret power raises so many emotions in our b.r.e.a.s.t.s be without any in his own? A mere actor performing a part? Is he unfeeling when he is pathetic, indifferent when he is indignant? Is he an alien to all the wisdom and virtue he inspires? No! were men of genius themselves to a.s.sert this, and it is said some incline so to do, there is a more certain conviction than their misconceptions, in our own consciousness, which for ever a.s.sures us, that deep feelings and elevated thoughts can alone spring from those who feel deeply and think n.o.bly.

In proving that the character of the man may be very opposite to that of his writings, we must recollect that the habits of the life may be contrary to the habits of the mind.[A] The influence of their studies over men of genius is limited. Out of the ideal world, man is reduced to be the active creature of sensation. An author has, in truth, two distinct characters: the literary, formed by the habits of his study; the personal, by the habits of his situation. GRAY, cold, effeminate, and timid in his personal, was lofty and awful in his literary character. We see men of polished manners and bland affections, who, in grasping a pen, are thrusting a poniard; while others in domestic life with the simplicity of children and the feebleness of nervous affections, can shake the senate or the bar with the vehemence of their eloquence and the intrepidity of their spirit. The writings of the famous BAPTISTA PORTA are marked by the boldness of his genius, which formed a singular contrast with the pusillanimity of his conduct when menaced or attacked. The heart may be feeble, though the mind is strong. To think boldly may be the habit of the mind, to act weakly may be the habit of the const.i.tution.

[Footnote A: Nothing is more delightful to me in my researches on the literary character than when I find in persons of unquestionable and high genius the results of my own discoveries. This circ.u.mstance has frequently happened to confirm my principles. Long after this was published, Madame de Stael made this important confession in her recent work, "Dix Annees d'Exil," p. 154. "Je ne pouvais me dissimuler que je n'etais pas une persoune courageuse; j'ai de la hardiesse dans _l'imagination,_ mais de la timidite dans la _caractere_."]

However the personal character may contrast with that of their genius, still are the works themselves genuine, and exist as realities for us--and were so, doubtless, to the composers themselves in the act of composition.

In the calm of study, a beautiful imagination may convert him whose morals are corrupt into an admirable moralist, awakening feelings which yet may be cold in the business of life: as we have shown that the phlegmatic can excite himself into wit, and the cheerful man delight in "Night Thoughts."

SALl.u.s.t, the corrupt Sall.u.s.t, might retain the most sublime conceptions of the virtues which were to save the Republic; and STERNE, whose heart was not so susceptible in ordinary occurrences, while he was gradually creating incident after incident and touching successive emotions, in the stories of Le Fevre and Maria, might have thrilled--like some of his readers. Many have mourned over the wisdom or the virtue they contemplated, mortified at their own infirmity. Thus, though there may be no ident.i.ty between the book and the man, still for us an author is ever an abstract being, and, as one of the Fathers said--"A dead man may sin dead, leaving books that make others sin." An author's wisdom or his folly does not die with him. The volume, not the author, is our companion, and is for us a real personage, performing before us whatever it inspires--"He being dead, yet speaketh." Such is the vitality of a book!

CHAPTER XXI.

The man of letters.--Occupies an intermediate station between authors and readers.--His solitude described.--Often the father of genius.--Atticus, a man of letters of antiquity.--The perfect character of a modern man of letters exhibited in Peiresc.--Their utility to authors and artists.

Among the active members of the literary republic, there is a cla.s.s whom formerly we distinguished by the t.i.tle of MEN OF LETTERS--a t.i.tle which, with us, has nearly gone out of currency, though I do not think that the general term of "literary men" would be sufficiently appropriate.

The man of letters, whose habits and whose whole life so closely resemble those of an author, can only be distinguished by this simple circ.u.mstance, that the man of letters is not an author.

Yet he whose sole occupation through life is literature--he who is always acquiring and never producing, appears as ridiculous as the architect who never raised an edifice, or the statuary who refrains from sculpture. His pursuits are reproached with terminating in an epicurean selfishness, and amidst his incessant avocations he himself is considered as a particular sort of idler.

This race of literary characters, as we now find them, could not have appeared till the press had poured forth its affluence. In the degree that the nations of Europe became literary, was that philosophical curiosity kindled which induced some to devote their fortunes and their days, and to experience some of the purest of human enjoyments in preserving and familiarising themselves with "the monuments of vanished minds," as books are called by D'Avenant with so much sublimity. Their expansive library presents an indestructible history of the genius of every people, through all their eras--and whatever men have thought and whatever men have done, were at length discovered in books.

Men of letters occupy an intermediate station between authors and readers.

They are gifted with more curiosity of knowledge, and more multiplied tastes, and by those precious collections which they are forming during their lives, are more completely furnished with the means than are possessed by the mult.i.tude who read, and the few who write.

The studies of an author are usually restricted to particular subjects.

His tastes are tinctured by their colouring, his mind is always shaping itself by their form. An author's works form his solitary pride, and his secret power; while half his life wears away in the slow maturity of composition, and still the ambition of authorship torments its victim alike in disappointment or in possession.

But soothing is the solitude of the MAN OF LETTERS! View the busied inhabitant of the library surrounded by the objects of his love! He possesses them--and they possess him! These volumes--images of our mind and pa.s.sions!--as he traces them from Herodotus to Gibbon, from Homer to Shakspeare--those portfolios which gather up, the inventions of genius, and that selected cabinet of medals which holds so many unwritten histories;--some favourite sculptures and pictures, and some antiquities of all nations, here and there about his house--these are his furniture!

In his unceasing occupations the only repose he requires, consists not in quitting, but in changing them. Every day produces its discovery; every day in the life of a man of letters may furnish a mult.i.tude of emotions and of ideas. For him there is a silence amidst the world; and in the scene ever opening before him, all that has pa.s.sed is acted over again, and all that is to come seems revealed as in a vision. Often his library is contiguous to his chamber,[A] and this domain "_parva sed apta_," this contracted s.p.a.ce, has often marked the boundary of the existence of the opulent owner, who lives where he will die, contracting his days into hours; and a whole life thus pa.s.sed is found too short to close its designs. Such are the men who have not been unhappily described by the Hollanders as _lief-hebbers_, lovers or fanciers, and their collection as _lief-hebbery_, things of their love. The Dutch call everything for which they are impa.s.sioned _lief-hebbery_; but their feeling being much stronger than their delicacy, they apply the term to everything, from poesy and picture to tulips and tobacco. The term wants the melody of the languages of genius; but something parallel is required to correct that indiscriminate notion which most persons a.s.sociate with that of _collectors_.

[Footnote A: The contiguity of the CHAMBER to the LIBRARY is not the solitary fancy of an individual, but marks the cla.s.s. Early in life, when in France and Holland, I met with several of these _amateurs_, who had bounded their lives by the circle of their collections, and were rarely seen out of them. The late Duke of ROXBURGH once expressed his delight to a literary friend of mine, that he had only to step from his sleeping apartment into his fine library; so that he could command, at all moments, the gratification of pursuing his researches while he indulged his reveries. The Chevalier VERHULST, of Bruxelles, of whom we have a curious portrait prefixed to the catalogue of his pictures and curiosities, was one of those men of letters who experienced this strong affection for his collections, and to such a degree, that he never went out of his house for twenty years; where, however, he kept up a courteous intercourse with the lovers of art and literature. He was an enthusiastic votary of Rubens, of whom he has written a copious life in Dutch, the only work he appears to have composed.]

It was fancifully said of one of these lovers, in the style of the age, that, "His book was his bride, and his study his bride-chamber." Many have voluntarily relinquished a public station and their rank in society, neglecting even their fortune and their health, for the life of self-oblivion of the man of letters. Count DE CAYLUS expended a princely income in the study and the encouragement of Art. He pa.s.sed his mornings among the studios of artists, watching their progress, increasing his collections, and closing his day in the retirement of his own cabinet. His rank and his opulence were no obstructions to his settled habits. CICERO himself, in his happier moments, addressing ATTICUS, exclaimed--"I had much rather be sitting on your little bench under Aristotle's picture, than in the curule chairs of our great ones." This wish was probably sincere, and reminds us of another great politician who in his secession from public affairs retreated to a literary life, where he appears suddenly to have discovered a new-found world. Fox's favourite line, which he often repeated, was--

How various his employments whom the world Calls idle!

De Sacy, one of the Port-Royalists, was fond of repeating this lively remark of a man of wit--"That all the mischief in the world comes from not being able to keep ourselves quiet in our room."

But tranquillity is essential to the existence of the man of letters--an unbroken and devotional tranquillity. For though, unlike the author, his occupations are interrupted without inconvenience, and resumed without effort; yet if the painful realities of life break into this visionary world of literature and art, there is an atmosphere of taste about him which will be dissolved, and harmonious ideas which will be chased away, as it happens when something is violently flung among the trees where the birds are singing--all instantly disperse!

Even to quit their collections for a short time is a real suffering to these lovers; everything which surrounds them becomes endeared by habit, and by some higher a.s.sociations. Men of letters have died with grief from having been forcibly deprived of the use of their libraries. DE THOU, with all a brother's sympathy, in his great history, has recorded the sad fates of several who had witnessed their collections dispersed in the civil wars of France, or had otherwise been deprived of their precious volumes. Sir ROBERT COTTON fell ill, and betrayed, in the ashy paleness of his countenance, the misery which killed him on the sequestration of his collections. "They have broken my heart who have locked up my library from me," was his lament.

If this pa.s.sion for acquisition and enjoyment be so strong and exquisite, what wonder that these "lovers" should regard all things as valueless in comparison with the objects of their love? There seem to be spells in their collections, and in their fascination they have often submitted to the ruin of their personal, but not of their internal enjoyments. They have scorned to balance in the scales the treasures of literature and art, though imperial magnificence once was ambitious to outweigh them.

VAN PRAUN, a friend of Albert Durer's, of whom we possess a catalogue of pictures and prints, was one of these enthusiasts of taste. The Emperor of Germany, probably desirous of finding a royal road to a rare collection, sent an agent to procure the present one entire; and that some delicacy might be observed with such a man, the purchase was to be proposed in the form of a mutual exchange; the emperor had gold, pearls, and diamonds. Our _lief-hebber_ having silently listened to the imperial agent, seemed astonished that such things should be considered as equivalents for a collection of works of art, which had required a long life of experience and many previous studies and practised tastes to have formed, and compared with which gold, pearls, and diamonds, afforded but a mean, an unequal, and a barbarous barter.

If the man of letters be less dependent on others for the very perception of his own existence than men of the world are, his solitude, however, is not that of a desert: for all there tends to keep alive those concentrated feelings which cannot be indulged with security, or even without ridicule in general society. Like the Lucullus of Plutarch, he would not only live among the votaries of literature, but would live for them; he throws open his library, his gallery, and his cabinet, to all the Grecians. Such men are the fathers of genius; they seem to possess an apt.i.tude in discovering those minds which are clouded over by the obscurity of their situations; and it is they who so frequently project those benevolent inst.i.tutions, where they have poured out the philanthropy of their hearts in that world which they appear to have forsaken. If Europe be literary, to whom does she owe this more than to these men of letters? Is it not to their n.o.ble pa.s.sion of ama.s.sing through life those magnificent collections, which often bear the names of their founders from the grat.i.tude of a following age? Venice, Florence, and Copenhagen, Oxford, and London, attest the existence of their labours. Our BODLEYS and our HARLEYS, our COTTONS and our SLOANES, our CRACHERODES, our TOWNLEYS, and our BANKS, were of this race![A] In the perpetuity of their own studies they felt as if they were extending human longevity, by throwing an unbroken light of knowledge into the next age. The private acquisitions of a solitary man of letters during half a century have become public endowments. A generous enthusiasm inspired these intrepid labours, and their voluntary privations of what the world calls its pleasures and its honours, would form an interesting history not yet written; their due, yet undischarged.

[Footnote A: Sir Thomas Bodley, in 1602, first brought the old libraries at Oxford into order for the benefit of students, and added thereto his own n.o.ble collection. That of Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford (died 1724), was purchased by the country, and is now in the British Museum; and also are the other collections named above. Sir Robert Cotton died 1631; his collection is remarkable for its historic doc.u.ments and state-papers. Sir Hans Sloane's collections may be said to be the foundation of the British Museum, and were purchased by Government for 20,000_l_., after his death, in 1749. Of Cracherode and Townley some notice will be found on p. 2 of the present volume. Sir Joseph Banks and his sister made large bequests to the same national establishment.--ED.]

But "men of the world," as they are emphatically distinguished, imagine that a man so lifeless in "the world" must be one of the dead in it, and, with mistaken wit, would inscribe over the sepulchre of his library, "Here lies the body of our friend." If the man of letters have voluntarily quitted their "world," at least he has pa.s.sed into another, where he enjoys a sense of existence through a long succession of ages, and where Time, who destroys all things for others, for him only preserves and discovers. This world is best described by one who has lingered among its inspirations. "We are wafted into other times and strange lands, connecting us by a sad but exalting relationship with the great events and great minds which have pa.s.sed away. Our studies at once cherish and control the imagination, by leading it over an unbounded range of the n.o.blest scenes in the overawing company of departed wisdom and genius."[A]

[Footnote A: "Quarterly Review," No. x.x.xiii. p. 145.]

Living more with books than with men, which is often becoming better acquainted with man himself, though not always with men, the man of letters is more tolerant of opinions than opinionists are among themselves. Nor are his views of human affairs contracted to the day, like those who, in the heat and hurry of a too active life, prefer expedients to principles; men who deem themselves politicians because they are not moralists; to whom the centuries behind have conveyed no results, and who cannot see how the present time is always full of the future.

"Everything," says the lively Burnet, "must be brought to the nature of tinder or gunpowder, ready for a spark to set it on fire," before they discover it. The man of letters indeed is accused of a cold indifference to the interests which divide society; he is rarely observed as the head or the "rump of a party;" he views at a distance their temporary pa.s.sions --those mighty beginnings, of which he knows the miserable terminations.

Antiquity presents the character of a perfect man of letters in ATTICUS, who retreated from a political to a literary life. Had his letters accompanied those of Cicero, they would have ill.u.s.trated the ideal character of his cla.s.s. But the sage ATTICUS rejected a popular celebrity for a pa.s.sion not less powerful, yielding up his whole soul to study.

CICERO, with all his devotion to literature, was at the same time agitated by another kind of glory, and the most perfect author in Rome imagined that he was enlarging his honours by the intrigues of the consulship. He has distinctly marked the character of the man of letters in the person of his friend ATTICUS, for which he has expressed his respect, although he could not content himself with its imitation. "I know," says this man of genius and ambition, "I know the greatness and ingenuousness of your soul, nor have I found any difference between us, but in a different choice of life; a certain sort of ambition has led me earnestly to seek after honours, while other motives, by no means blameable, induced you to adopt an honourable leisure; _honestum otium_."[A] These motives appear in the interesting memoirs of this man of letters; a contempt of political intrigues combined with a desire to escape from the splendid bustle of Rome to the learned leisure of Athens. He wished to dismiss a pompous train of slaves for the delight of a.s.sembling under his roof a literary society of readers and transcribers. And having collected under that roof the portraits or busts of the ill.u.s.trious men of his country, inspired by their spirit and influenced by their virtues or their genius, he inscribed under them, in concise verses, the characters of their mind. Valuing wealth only for its use, a dignified economy enabled him to be profuse, and a moderate expenditure allowed him to be generous.

[Footnote A: "Ad Attic.u.m," Lib. i. Ep. 17.]

The result of this literary life was the strong affections of the Athenians. At the first opportunity the absence of the man of letters offered, they raised a statue to him, conferring on our POMPONIUS the fond surname of ATTICUS. To have received a name from the voice of the city they inhabited has happened to more than one man of letters. PINELLI, born a Neapolitan, but residing at Venice, among other peculiar honours received from the senate, was there distinguished by the affectionate t.i.tle of "the Venetian."

Yet such a character as ATTICUS could not escape censure from "men of the world." They want the heart and the imagination to conceive something better than themselves. The happy indifference, perhaps the contempt of our ATTICUS for rival factions, they have stigmatised as a cold neutrality, a timid pusillanimous hypocrisy. Yet ATTICUS could not have been a mutual friend, had not both parties alike held the man of letters as a sacred being amidst their disguised ambition; and the urbanity of ATTICUS, while it balanced the fierceness of two heroes, Pompey and Caesar, could even temper the rivalry of genius in the orators Hortensius and Cicero. A great man of our own country widely differed from the accusers of Atticus. Sir MATTHEW HALE lived in distracted times, and took the character of our man of letters for his model, adopting two principles in the conduct of the Roman. He engaged himself with no party business, and afforded a constant relief to the unfortunate, of whatever party. He was thus preserved amidst the contests of the times.