Literary Character of Men of Genius Part 8

Many years after having written the above, I discovered two recent confessions which confirm the principle. A literary character, the late Dr. LEYDEN, acknowledged, that "in conversation I often verge so nearly on absurdity, that I know it is perfectly easy to misconceive me, as well as to misrepresent me." And Miss Edgeworth, in describing her father's conversation, observes that, "his openness went too far, almost to imprudence; exposing him not only to be misrepresented, but to be misunderstood. Those who did not know him intimately, often took literally what was either said in sport, or spoken with the intention of making a strong impression for some good purpose." c.u.mBERLAND, whose conversation was delightful, happily describes the species I have noticed. "Nonsense talked by men of wit and understanding in the hour of relaxation is of the very finest essence of conviviality, and a treat delicious to those who have the sense to comprehend it; but it implies a trust in the company not always to be risked." The truth is, that many, eminent for their genius, have been remarkable in society for a simplicity and playfulness almost infantine. Such was the gaiety of Hume, such the _bonhomie_ of Fox; and one who had long lived in a circle of men of genius in the last age, was disposed to consider this infantine simplicity as characteristic of genius. It is a solitary grace, which can never lend its charm to a man of the world, whose purity of mind has long been lost in a hacknied intercourse with everything exterior to himself.

But above all, what most offends, is that freedom of opinion which a man of genius can no more divest himself of, than of the features of his face.

But what if this intractable obstinacy be only resistance of character?

Burns never could account to himself why, "though when he had a mind he was pretty generally beloved, he could never get the art of commanding respect," and imagined it was owing to his deficiency in what Sterne calls "that understrapping virtue of discretion;" "I am so apt to a _lapsus linguae_" says this honest sinner. Amidst the stupidity of a formal circle, and the inanity of triflers, however such men may conceal their impatience, one of them has forcibly described the reaction of this suppressed feeling: "The force with which it burst out when the pressure was taken off, gave the measure of the constraint which had been endured."

Erasmus, that learned and charming writer, who was blessed with the genius which could enliven a folio, has well described himself, _sum natura propensior ad jocos quam forta.s.se deceat_:--more const.i.tutionally inclined to pleasantry than, as he is pleased to add, perhaps became him. We know in his intimacy with Sir Thomas More, that Erasmus was a most exhilarating companion; yet in his intercourse with the great he was not fortunate. At the first glance he saw through affectation and parade, his praise of folly was too ironical, and his freedom carried with it no pleasantry for those who knew not to prize a laughing sage.

In conversation the operations of the intellect with some are habitually slow, but there will be found no difference between the result of their perceptions and those of a quicker nature; and hence it is that slow-minded men are not, as men of the world imagine, always the dullest.

NICOLLE said of a scintillant wit, "He vanquishes me in the drawing-room, but surrenders to me at discretion on the stairs." Many a great wit has thought the wit it was too late to speak, and many a great reasoner has only reasoned when his opponent has disappeared. Conversation with such men is a losing game; and it is often lamentable to observe how men of genius are reduced to a state of helplessness from not commanding their attention, while inferior intellects habitually are found to possess what is called "a ready mind." For this reason some, as it were in despair, have shut themselves up in silence. A lively Frenchman, in describing the distinct sorts of conversation of his literary friends, among whom was Dr.

Franklin, energetically hits off that close observer and thinker, wary, even in society, by noting down "the silence of the celebrated Franklin."

We learn from c.u.mberland that Lord Mansfield did not promote that conversation which gave him any pains to carry on. He resorted to society for simple relaxation, and could even find a pleasure in dulness when accompanied with placidity. "It was a kind of cushion to his understanding," observes the wit. CHAUCER, like LA FONTAINE, was more facetious in his tales than in his conversation; for the Countess of Pembroke used to rally him, observing that his silence was more agreeable to her than his talk. Ta.s.sO'S conversation, which his friend Manso has attempted to preserve for us, was not agreeable. In company he sat absorbed in thought, with a melancholy air; and it was on one of these occasions that a person present observing that this conduct was indicative of madness, that Ta.s.sO, who had heard him, looking on him without emotion, asked whether he was ever acquainted with a madman who knew when to hold his tongue! Malebranche tells us that one of these mere men of learning, who can only venture to praise antiquity, once said, "I have seen DESCARTES; I knew him, and frequently have conversed with him; he was a good sort of man, and was not wanting in sense, but he had nothing extraordinary in him." Had Aristotle spoken French instead of Greek, and had this man frequently conversed with him, unquestionably he would not have discovered, even in this idol of antiquity, anything extraordinary.

Two thousand years would have been wanting for our learned critic's perceptions.

It is remarkable that the conversationists have rarely proved to be the abler writers. He whose fancy is susceptible of excitement in the presence of his auditors, making the minds of men run with his own, seizing on the first impressions, and touching the shadows and outlines of things--with a memory where all lies ready at hand, quickened by habitual a.s.sociations, and varying with all those extemporary changes and fugitive colours which melt away in the rainbow of conversation; with that wit, which is only wit in one place, and for a time; with that vivacity of animal spirits which often exists separately from the more retired intellectual powers--this man can strike out wit by habit, and pour forth a stream of phrase which has sometimes been imagined to require only to be written down to be read with the same delight with which it was heard; but he cannot print his tone, nor his air and manner, nor the contagion of his hardihood. All the while we were not sensible of the flutter of his ideas, the incoherence of his transitions, his vague notions, his doubtful a.s.sertions, and his meagre knowledge. A pen is the extinguisher of this luminary.

A curious contrast occurred between BUFFON and his friend MONTBELLIARD, who was a.s.sociated in his great work. The one possessed the reverse qualities of the other: BUFFON, whose style in his composition is elaborate and declamatory, was in conversation coa.r.s.e and careless.

Pleading that conversation with him was only a relaxation, he rather sought than avoided the idiom and slang of the mob, when these seemed expressive and facetious; while MONTBELLIARD threw every charm of animation over his delightful talk: but when he took his seat at the rival desk of Buffon, an immense interval separated them; he whose tongue dropped the honey and the music of the bee, handled a pen of iron; while Buffon's was the soft pencil of the philosophical painter of nature.

COWLEY and KILLEGREW furnish another instance. COWLEY was embarra.s.sed in conversation, and had no quickness in argument or reply: a mind pensive and elegant could not be struck at to catch fire: while with KILLEGREW the sparkling bubbles of his fancy rose and dropped.[A] When the delightful conversationist wrote, the deception ceased. Denham, who knew them both, hit off the difference between them:

Had Cowley ne'er spoke, Killegrew ne'er writ, Combined in one they had made a matchless wit.

[Footnote A: Killegrew's eight plays, upon which his character as an author rests, have not been republished with one exception--_the Parson's Wedding_--which is given in Dodsley's collection; and which is sufficient to satisfy curiosity. He was a favourite with Charles the Second, and had great influence with him. Some of his witty court jests are preserved, but are too much imbued with the spirit of the age to be quoted here. He was sometimes useful by devoting his satiric sallies to urge the king to his duties.--ED.]

Not, however, that a man of genius does not throw out many things in conversation which have only been found admirable when the public possessed them. The public often widely differ from the individual, and a century's opinion may intervene between them. The fate of genius is sometimes that of the Athenian sculptor, who submitted his colossal Minerva to a private party for inspection. Before the artist they trembled for his daring chisel, and the man of genius smiled; behind him they calumniated, and the man of genius forgave. Once fixed in a public place, in the eyes of the whole city, the statue was the Divinity! There is a certain distance at which opinions, as well as statues, must be viewed.

But enough of those defects of men of genius which often attend their conversations. Must we then bow to authorial dignity, and kiss hands, because they are inked? Must we bend to the artist, who considers us as nothing unless we are canvas or marble under his hands? Are there not men of genius the grace of society and the charm of their circle? Fortunate men! more blest than their brothers; but for this, they are not the more men of genius, nor the others less. To how many of the ordinary intimates of a superior genius who complain of his defects might one say, "Do his productions not delight and sometimes surprise you?--You are silent! I beg your pardon; the _public_ has informed you of a great name; you would not otherwise have perceived the precious talent of your neighbour: you know little of your friend but his _name_." The personal familiarity of ordinary minds with a man of genius has often produced a ludicrous prejudice. A Scotchman, to whom the name of _a_ Dr. Robertson had travelled down, was curious to know who he was.--"Your neighbour!"--But he could not persuade himself that the man whom he conversed with was the great historian of his country. Even a good man could not believe in the announcement of the Messiah, from the same sort of prejudice: "Can there anything good come out of Nazareth?"

Suffer a man of genius to be such as nature and habit have formed him, and he will then be the most interesting companion; then will you see nothing but his character. AKENSIDE, in conversation with select friends, often touched by a romantic enthusiasm, would pa.s.s in review those eminent ancients whom he loved; he imbued with his poetic faculty even the details of their lives; and seemed another Plato while he poured libations to their memory in the language of Plato, among those whose studies and feelings were congenial with his own. ROMNEY, with a fancy entirely his own, would give vent to his effusions, uttered in a hurried accent and elevated tone, and often accompanied by tears, to which by const.i.tution he was p.r.o.ne; thus c.u.mberland, from personal intimacy, describes the conversation of this man of genius. Even the temperate sensibility of HUME was touched by the bursts of feeling of ROUSSEAU; who, he says, "in conversation kindles often to a degree of heat which looks like inspiration." BARRY, that unhappy genius! was the most repulsive of men in his exterior. The vehemence of his language, the wildness of his glance, his habit of introducing vulgar oaths, which, by some unlucky a.s.sociation of habit, served him as expletives and interjections, communicated even a horror to some. A pious and a learned lady, who had felt intolerable uneasiness in his presence, did not, however, leave this man of genius that very evening without an impression that she had never heard so divine a man in her life. The conversation happening to turn on that principle of benevolence which pervades Christianity, and on the meekness of the Founder, it gave BARRY an opportunity of opening on the character of Jesus with that copiousness of heart and mind which, once heard, could never be forgotten. That artist indeed had long in his meditations an ideal head of Christ, which he was always talking of executing: "It is here!" he would cry, striking his head. That which baffled the invention, as we are told, of Leonardo da Vinci, who left his Christ headless, having exhausted his creative faculty among the apostles, this imaginative picture of the mysterious union of a divine and human nature, never ceased, even when conversing, to haunt the reveries of BARRY.

There are few authors and artists who are not eloquently instructive on that cla.s.s of knowledge or that department of art which reveals the mastery of their life. Their conversations of this nature affect the mind to a distant period of life. Who, having listened to such, has forgotten what a man of genius has said at such moments? Who dwells not on the single thought or the glowing expression, stamped in the heat of the moment, which came from its source? Then the mind of genius rises as the melody of the aeolian harp, when the winds suddenly sweep over the strings --it comes and goes--and leaves a sweetness beyond the harmonies of art.

The _Miscellanea_ of POLITIAN are not only the result of his studies in the rich library of Lorenzo de' Medici, but of conversations which had pa.s.sed in those rides which Lorenzo, accompanied by Politian, preferred to the pomp of cavalcades. When the Cardinal de Caba.s.solle strayed with PETRARCH about his valley in many a wandering discourse, they sometimes extended their walks to such a distance, that the servant sought them in vain to announce the dinner-hour, and found them returning in the evening.

When HELVETIUS enjoyed the social conversation of a literary friend, he described it as "a chase of ideas." Such are the literary conversations which HORNE TOOKE alluded to, when he said "I a.s.sure you, we find more difficulty to finish than to begin our conversations."

The natural and congenial conversations of men of letters and of artists must then be those which are a.s.sociated with their pursuits, and these are of a different complexion with the talk of men of the world, the objects of which are drawn from the temporary pa.s.sions of party-men, or the variable _on dits_ of triflers--topics studiously rejected from these more tranquillising conversations. Diamonds can only be polished by their own dust, and are only shaped by the friction of other diamonds; and so it happens with literary men and artists.

A meeting of this nature has been recorded by CICERO, which himself and ATTICUS had with VARRO in the country. Varro arriving from Rome in their neighbourhood somewhat fatigued, had sent a messenger to his friends. "As soon as we had heard these tidings," says Cicero, "we could not delay hastening to see one who was attached to us by the same pursuits and by former friendship." They set off, but found Varro half way, urged by the same eager desire to join them. They conducted him to Cicero's villa.

Here, while Cicero was inquiring after the news of Rome, Atticus interrupted the political rival of Caesar, observing, "Let us leave off inquiring after things which cannot be heard without pain. Rather ask about what we know, for Varro's muses are longer silent than they used to be, yet surely he has not forsaken them, but rather conceals what he writes."--"By no means!" replied Varro, "for I deem him to be a whimsical man to write what he wishes to suppress. I have indeed a great work in hand (on the Latin language), long designed for Cicero." The conversation then took its natural turn by Atticus having got rid of the political anxiety of Cicero. Such, too, were the conversations which pa.s.sed at the literary residence of the Medici family, which was described, with as much truth as fancy, as "the Lyceum of philosophy, the Arcadia of poets, and the Academy of painters." We have a pleasing instance of such a meeting of literary friends in those conversations which pa.s.sed in POPE'S garden, where there was often a remarkable union of n.o.bility and literary men. There Thomson, Mallet, Gay, Hooke, and Glover met Cobham, Bathurst, Chesterfield, Lyttleton, and other lords; there some of these poets found patrons, and POPE himself discovered critics. The contracted views of Spence have unfortunately not preserved these literary conversations, but a curious pa.s.sage has dropped from the pen of Lord BOLINGBROKE, in what his lordship calls "a letter to Pope," often probably pa.s.sed over among his political tracts. It breathes the spirit of those delightful conversations. "My thoughts," writes his lordship, "in what order soever they flow, shall be communicated to you just _as they pa.s.s through my mind_--just as they used to be when _we conversed together_ on these or any other subject; when _we sauntered alone_, or as we have often done with good Arbuthnot, and the jocose Dean of St. Patrick, among the _multiplied scenes of your little garden._ The theatre is large enough for my ambition." Such a scene opens a beautiful subject for a curious portrait-painter. These literary groups in the garden of Pope, sauntering, or divided in confidential intercourse, would furnish a scene of literary repose and enjoyment among some of the most ill.u.s.trious names in our literature.

CHAPTER X.

Literary solitude.--Its necessity.--Its pleasures.--Of visitors by profession.--Its inconveniences.

The literary character is reproached with an extreme pa.s.sion for retirement, cultivating those insulating habits, which, while they are great interruptions, and even weakeners, of domestic happiness, induce at the same time in public life to a secession from its cares, and an avoidance of its active duties. Yet the vacancies of retired men are eagerly filled by the many unemployed men of the world happily framed for its business. We do not hear these accusations raised against the painter who wears away his days by his easel, or the musician by the side of his instrument; and much less should we against the legal and the commercial character; yet all these are as much withdrawn from public and private life as the literary character. The desk is as insulating as the library.

Yet the man who is working for his individual interest is more highly estimated than the retired student, whose disinterested pursuits are at least more profitable to the world than to himself. La Bruyere discovered the world's erroneous estimate of literary labour: "There requires a better name," he says, "to be bestowed on the leisure (the idleness he calls it) of the literary character,--to meditate, to compose, to read and to be tranquil, should be called _working_." But so invisible is the progress of intellectual pursuits and so rarely are the objects palpable to the observers, that the literary character appears to be denied for his pursuits, what cannot be refused to every other. That unremitting application and unbroken series of their thoughts, admired in every profession, is only complained of in that one whose professors with so much sincerity mourn over the brevity of life, which has often closed on them while sketching their works.

It is, however, only in solitude that the genius of eminent men has been formed. There their first thoughts sprang, and there it will become them to find their last: for the solitude of old age--and old age must be often in solitude--may be found the happiest with the literary character.

Solitude is the nurse of enthusiasm, and enthusiasm is the true parent of genius. In all ages solitude has been called for--has been flown to. No considerable work was ever composed till its author, like an ancient magician, first retired to the grove, or to the closet, to invocate. When genius languishes in an irksome solitude among crowds, that is the moment to fly into seclusion and meditation. There is a society in the deepest solitude; in all the men of genius of the past

First of your kind, Society divine!

and in themselves; for there only can they indulge in the romances of their soul, and there only can they occupy themselves in their dreams and their vigils, and, with the morning, fly without interruption to the labour they had reluctantly quitted. If there be not periods when they shall allow their days to melt harmoniously into each other, if they do not pa.s.s whole weeks together in their study, without intervening absences, they will not be admitted into the last recess of the Muses.

Whether their glory come from researches, or from enthusiasm, time, with not a feather ruffled on his wings, time alone opens discoveries and kindles meditation. This desert of solitude, so vast and so dreary to the man of the world, to the man of genius is the magical garden of Armida, whose enchantments arose amidst solitude, while solitude was everywhere among those enchantments.

Whenever MICHAEL ANGELO, that "divine madman," as Richardson once wrote on the back of one of his drawings, was meditating on some great design, he closed himself up from the world, "Why do you lead so solitary a life?"

asked a friend. "Art," replied the sublime artist, "Art is a jealous G.o.d; it requires the whole and entire man." During his mighty labour in the Sistine Chapel, he refused to have any communication with any person even at his own house. Such undisturbed and solitary attention is demanded even by undoubted genius as the price of performance. How then shall we deem of that feebler race who exult in occasional excellence, and who so often deceive themselves by mistaking the evanescent flashes of genius for that holier flame which burns on its altar, because the fuel is incessantly supplied?

We observe men of genius, in public situations, sighing for this solitude.

Amidst the impediments of the world, they are doomed to view their intellectual banquet often rising before them, like some fairy delusion, never to taste it. The great VERULAM often complained of the disturbances of his public life, and rejoiced in the occasional retirement he stole from public affairs. "And now, because I am in the country, I will send you some of my country fruits, which with me are good meditations; when I am in the city, they are choked with business." Lord CLARENDON, whose life so happily combined the contemplative with the active powers of man, dwells on three periods of retirement which he enjoyed; he always took pleasure in relating the great tranquillity of spirit experienced during his solitude at Jersey, where for more than two years, employed on his history, he daily wrote "one sheet of large paper with his own hand." At the close of his life, his literary labours in his other retirements are detailed with a proud satisfaction. Each of his solitudes occasioned a new acquisition; to one he owed the Spanish, to another the French, and to a third the Italian literature. The public are not yet acquainted with the fertility of Lord Clarendon's literary labours. It was not vanity that induced Scipio to declare of solitude, that it had no loneliness for him, since he voluntarily retired amidst a glorious life to his Linternum.

CICERO was uneasy amid applauding Rome, and has distinguished his numerous works by the t.i.tles of his various villas. AULUS GELLIUS marked his solitude by his "Attic Nights." The "Golden Grove" of JEREMY TAYLOR is the produce of his retreat at the Earl of Carberry's seat in Wales; and the "Diversions of Purley" preserved a man of genius for posterity. VOLTAIRE had talents well adapted for society; but at one period of his life he pa.s.sed five years in the most secret seclusion, and indeed usually lived in retirement. MONTESQUIEU quitted the brilliant circles of Paris for his books and his meditations, and was ridiculed by the gay triflers he deserted; "but my great work," he observes in triumph, "avance a pas de geant." Harrington, to compose his "Oceana," severed himself from the society of his friends. DESCARTES, inflamed by genius, hires an obscure house in an unfrequented quarter at Paris, and there he pa.s.ses two years, unknown to his acquaintance. ADAM SMITH, after the publication of his first work, withdrew into a retirement that lasted ten years: even Hume rallies him for separating himself from the world; but by this means the great political inquirer satisfied the world by his great work. And thus it was with men of genius long ere Petrarch withdrew to his Val chiusa.

The interruption of visitors by profession has been feelingly lamented by men of letters. The mind, maturing its speculations, feels the unexpected conversation of cold ceremony chilling as March winds over the blossoms of the Spring. Those unhappy beings who wander from house to house, privileged by the charter of society to obstruct the knowledge they cannot impart, to weary because they are wearied, or to seek amus.e.m.e.nt at the cost of others, belong to that cla.s.s of society which have affixed no other idea to time than that of getting rid of it. These are judges not the best qualified to comprehend the nature and evil of their depredations in the silent apartment of the studious, who may be often driven to exclaim, in the words of the Psalmist, "Verily I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocency: _for all the day long have I been plagued, and chastened every morning._"

When Montesquieu was deeply engaged in his great work, he writes to a friend:--"The favour which your friend Mr. Hein, often does me to pa.s.s his mornings with me, occasions great damage to my work as well by his impure French as the length of his details."--"We are afraid," said some of those visitors to BAXTER, "that we break in upon your time."--"To be sure you do," replied the disturbed and blunt scholar. To hint as gently as he could to his friends that he was avaricious of time, one of the learned Italians had a prominent inscription over the door of his study, intimating that whoever remained there must join in his labours. The amiable MELANCTHON, incapable of a harsh expression, when he received these idle visits, only noted down the time he had expended, that he might reanimate his industry, and not lose a day. EVELYN, continually importuned by morning visitors, or "taken up by other impertinencies of my life in the country," stole his hours from his night rest "to redeem his losses."

The literary character has been driven to the most inventive shifts to escape the irruption of a formidable party at a single rush, who enter, without "besieging or beseeching," as Milton has it. The late Mr. Ellis, a man of elegant tastes and poetical temperament, on one of these occasions, at his country-house, a.s.sured a literary friend, that when driven to the last, he usually made his escape by a leap out of the window; and Boileau has noticed a similar dilemma when at the villa of the President Lamoignon, while they were holding their delightful conversations in his grounds.

Quelquefois de facheux arrivent trois volees, Que du parc a l'instant a.s.siegent les allees; Alors sauve qui peut, et quatre fois heureux Qui sait s'echapper, a quelque autre ignore d'eux.

BRAND HOLLIS endeavoured to hold out "the idea of singularity as a shield;" and the great ROBERT BOYLE was compelled to advertise in a newspaper that he must decline visits on certain days, that he might have leisure to finish some of his works.[A]

[Footnote A: This curious advertis.e.m.e.nt is preserved in Dr. Birch's "Life of Boyle," p. 272. Boyle's labours were so exhausting to his naturally weak frame, and so continuous from his eager desire for investigation, that this advertis.e.m.e.nt was concocted by the advice of his physician, "to desire to be excused from receiving visits (unless upon occasions very extraordinary) two days in the week, namely, on the forenoon of Tuesdays and Fridays (both foreign post days), and on Wednesdays and Sat.u.r.days in the afternoons, that he may have some time, both to recruit his spirits, to range his papers, and fill up the _lacunae_ of them, and to take some care of his affairs in Ireland, which are very much disordered and have their face often changed by the public calamities there." He ordered likewise a board to be placed over his door, with an inscription signifying when he did, and when he did not receive visits.--ED.]

BOCCACCIO has given an interesting account of the mode of life of the studious Petrarch, for on a visit he found that Petrarch would not suffer his hours of study to be broken into even, by the person whom of all men he loved most, and did not quit his morning studies for his guest, who during that time occupied himself by reading or transcribing the works of his master. At the decline of day, Petrarch quitted his study for his garden, where he delighted to open his heart in mutual confidence.

But this solitude, at first a necessity, and then a pleasure, at length is not borne without repining. To tame the fervid wildness of youth to the strict regularities of study, is a sacrifice performed by the votary; but even MILTON appears to have felt this irksome period of life; for in the preface to "Smectymnuus" he says:--"It is but justice not to defraud of due esteem the _wearisome labours_ and _studious watchings_ wherein I have spent and _tired out_ almost a whole youth." COWLEY, that enthusiast for seclusion, in his retirement calls himself "the Melancholy Cowley." I have seen an original letter of this poet to Evelyn, where he expresses his eagerness to see Sir George Mackenzie's "Essay on Solitude;" for a copy of which he had sent over the town, without obtaining one, being "either all bought up, or burnt in the fire of London."[A]--"I am the more desirous,"

he says, "because it is a subject in which I am most deeply interested."

Thus Cowley was requiring a book to confirm his predilection, and we know he made the experiment, which did not prove a happy one. We find even GIBBON, with all his fame about him, antic.i.p.ating the dread he entertained of solitude in advanced life. "I feel, and shall continue to feel, that domestic solitude, however it may be alleviated by the world, by study, and even by friendship, is a comfortless state, which will grow more painful as I descend in the vale of years." And again:--"Your visit has only served to remind me that man, however amused or occupied in his closet, was not made to live alone."

[Footnote A: This event happening when London was the chief emporium of books, occasioned many printed just before the time to be excessively rare. The booksellers of Paternoster-row had removed their stock to the vaults below St. Paul's for safety as the fire approached them. Among the stock was Prynne's records, vol. iii., which were all burnt, except a few copies which had been sent into the country, a perfect set has been valued in consequence at one hundred pounds. The rarity of all books published about the era of the great fire of London induced one curious collector, Dr. Bliss, of Oxford, to especially devote himself to gathering such in his library.--ED.]

Had the mistaken notions of Sprat not deprived us of Cowley's correspondence, we doubtless had viewed the picture of lonely genius touched by a tender pencil.[A] But we have SHENSTONE, and GRAY, and SWIFT. The heart of Shenstone bleeds in the dead oblivion of solitude: --"Now I am come from a visit, every little uneasiness is sufficient to introduce my whole train of melancholy considerations, and to make me utterly dissatisfied with the life I now lead, and the life I foresee I shall lead. I am angry, and envious, and dejected, and frantic, and disregard all present things, as becomes a madman to do. I am infinitely pleased, though it is a gloomy joy, with the application of Dr. Swift's complaint, that he is forced to die in a rage, like a rat in a poisoned hole." Let the lover of solitude muse on its picture throughout the year, in this stanza, by the same amiable but suffering poet:--

Tedious again to curse the drizzling day, Again to trace the wintry tracks of snow, Or, soothed by vernal airs, again survey The self-same hawthorns bud, and cowslips blow.

Swift's letters paint with terrifying colours a picture of solitude; and at length his despair closed with idiotism. Even the playful muse of GRESSET throws a sombre querulousness over the solitude of men of genius:--

--Je les vois, victimes du genie, Au foible prix d'un eclat pa.s.sager, Vivre isoles, sans jouir de la vie!

Vingt ans d'ennuis pour quelques jours de gloire.

Such are the necessity, the pleasures, and the inconveniences of solitude!

It ceases to be a question whether men of genius should blend with the ma.s.ses of society; for whether in solitude, or in the world, of all others they must learn to live with themselves. It is in the world that they borrow the sparks of thought that fly upwards and perish but the flame of genius can only be lighted in their own solitary breast.

[Footnote A: See the article on Cowley in "Calamities of Authors."]