Genius in sunshine and shadow

Front matter

Accessions

Gy the Same Author.

—————

Preface

Tue volume in hand might perhaps better have been entitled “ Library Notes,’ as the pages are liter- _ally the gathered notes of the author’s library-hours. The reader will kindly peruse these pages remembering that they assume only to be the gossip, as it were, of the author with himself,— notes which have grown to these proportions by casual accumulation in the course of other studies, and without consecutive purpose. That these notes thus made have been put into printed form, is owing to the publisher’s chance knowledge and hearty approval of them. These few lines are by way, not of apology, — no sensible person ever made an apology, according to Mr. Emerson, — but of introduction; so that the reader may not fancy he is to encounter a labored essay upon the theme suggested by the title of the volume.

These pages may not be without a certain wholesome influence, if, fortunately, they shall incite others to analyze the character of genius as exhibited by the masters of art and literature. The facts alluded to, v1 PREFACE.

though familiar to many, are not so to all; wherefore the volume may indirectly promote the knowledge of both history and biography, at the same time leading the thoughtful reader to seek further and more ample information concerning those individuals who are here so briefly introduced.

M. M. B.

GENIUS

IN SUNSHINE AND SHADOW.

Chapter I

THE eyver-flowing tide of time rapidly obliterates the footprints of those whom the world has delighted to honor. While it has caused heroic names, like their possessors, to lapse into oblivion, it has also shrouded many a historical page with the softened veil of distance, like ivy-grown towers, rendering what was once terrible now only picturesque. In glancing back through thousands of years, and permitting the mind to rest on the earliest recorded epochs, one is apt to forget how much human life then, in all its fundamental characteristics, was like our own daily experience. There never was a golden age; that is yet to come. The most assiduous antiquarian has only corroborated the fact that human nature is unchanged. Conventionalities, manners and customs, the fashions, may change, but human nature does not. As an example of the mutability of fame, we have only to ask ourselves what is actually known i to-day of Homer, Aristophanes, and their renowned contemporaries, or even of our more familiar Shakspeare?? Of the existence of the first named we have evidence in his two eréat epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey ; but, though deemed the most famous poet that ever lived, we do not even know his birthplace.

“Ten ancient towns contend for Homer dead, Through which the living Homer begged his bread.”

The cautious historian only tells us that he is supposed to have flourished about nine hundred years before the time of Christ; while there are also learned writers who contend that no such person as Homer? ever lived, and who attribute the two most famous poems of antiquity to various minstrels or balladmongers, who celebrated the “tale of Troy divine” at various periods, and whose songs and legends were fused into unity at the time of Pisistratus.

1 Goldsmith makes his Chinese philosopher recount the name of Homer as the first poet and beggar among the ancients, —a blind man whose mouth was more frequently filled hee verses than with bread.

2 Shakspeare’s line expired in his daughter’s only acer Several of the descendants of Shakspeare’s sister Joan, bearing a strong family likeness to the great poet, were, so late as 1852, living in and about Stratford, chiefly in a state of indigence.

° I] have no doubt whatever that Homer is a mere concrete name for the rhapsodies of the Iliad. Of course there was a Homer, and twenty besides. I will engage to compile twelve books, with characters just as distinct and consistent as those of the Iliad, from the metrical ballads and other chronicles of England, about Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.— Coleridge.

_ Over the personality of Aristophanes,! the great comic poet of Greece, who is supposed to have flourished some five or six hundred years later than Homer, there rests the same cloud of obscurity, and he is clearly identified only by eleven authentic com-’ edies which are still extant, though he is believed to, have written fifty. Of Shakspeare, born some two thousand years later (1564), how little is actually known beyond the fact of his birthplace! Even the authorship of his plays, like that of Homer’s poems, is a subject of dispute. Perhaps, however, this loss of individuality but adds to the influence of the poet’s divine mission. The really great men of history, benefactors of their race, are those who still live in the undying thoughts which they have left behind them.

In this familiar gossip we propose to glance briefly at such names as may suggest themselves, without observing any strict system of classification. The theme is so fruitful, the pages of history so teem with portraits which stand forth in groups to attract the eye, that one hardly knows where to begin, what matter to exclude, what to adduce; and therefore, closing the elaborate records of the past, we will trust to momentary inspiration and the ready promptings of memory.

~The first thought which strikes us in this connection is, that the origin of those whom the world has

1 They must needs be men of lofty stature, whose shadows lengthen out to remote posterity. — Hazlitt.

called great men who have written their names indelibly upon the pages of history —is often of the humblest character. Such men have most frequently risen from the ranks. In fact, genius ignores all social barriers and springs forth wherever heaven has dropped the seed. The grandest characters known in art, literature, and the useful inventions have illustrated the axiom that “brave deeds are the ancestors of brave men;” and it would almost appear that an element of hardship is necessary to the effective development of true genius. Indeed, when we come to the highest achievements of the greatest minds, it seems that they were not limited by race, condition of life, or the circumstances of their age. “It is,’ says Emerson, “the nature of poetry to spring, like the rainbow daughter of Wonder, from the Invisible, to abolish the past and refuse all history.” But this of course refers only to poetry in its loftiest and noblest conceptions and sentiments; and then only in passages of a great. work.

ARsop, the fabulist, who flourished six hundred years before Christ, and whose fables are as familiar to us after the lapse of twenty-five hundred years as household words; Publius Syrus,! the eminent moralist, who lived in the time of Julius Cesar, and whose wise axioms are to be found in every library ;

1 The Edinburgh “ Review,” once the most formidable of critical journals, took its motto from Publius Syrus : —

Terence, the Carthaginian poet and dramatist ; Epictetus, the stoic philosopher, — all were slaves in early life,? but won freedom and lasting fame by force of their native genius. No man is nobler than another unless he is born with better abilities, a more amiable disposition, and a larger heart and brain. The field is open to all; for it is fixedness of purpose and perseverance that win the prizes of this world, — qualities that can be exercised by the most humble.

Protagoras, the Greek sophist and orator, was in his youth a street porter of Athens, carrying loads upon his back like a beast of burden. He was a singularly independent genius, and was expelled from his native city because he openly doubted the existence of the gods. His countryman, Cleanthes the stoic, was also “a hewer of stone and drawer of water,’ but rose.among the Athenians to be esteemed as a rival of the great philosopher Zeno. He wrote

-1 The kindly human sympathy exhibited by Terence contributed largely to the popularity of his dramas. Whenever the often-quoted words, “I am a man; and I have an interest in everything that concerns humanity,” were spoken upon the Roman stage, they were received with tumultuous applause by all classes.

2 Crassus, a Roman triumvir, noted for his great wealth, who lived about a hundred years before the Christian Era, bought and sold slaves. These he educated, and taught the highest accomplishments of the day, sparing no labor or expense for the purpose. These educated slaves were then sold for large sums _ of money, so that any rich man could own his private poet and scholar. We are told by Plutarch that some of these slaves brought enormous prices into the treasury of Crassus.

many works in his day, — about three hundred years before the Christian Era,— none of which have been preserved except a hymn to Jupiter, which is remarkable for purity of thought and elevation of sentiment. Faas

We need not confine ourselves, however, to so remote a period to illustrate that genius is independent of circumstances. In our random treatment of the subject there occurs to us the name of Bandoccin, one of the most learned men of the sixteenth century, who ~ was the son of an itinerant shoemaker, and who was himself brought up to the trade. Gelli, the prolific Italian author, and president of the Florentine Academy, was a tailor by trade, and of very humble birth. His moral dialogues entitled, £ Capricct del Bottajo (“The Whims of the Cooper”), have been pronounced by competent critics to be extraordinary for originality and piquancy, while all his works are remarkable for purity of diction. Canova, the sculptor of world-wide fame, was the son of a day-laborer in > the marble quarries. Opie, the distinguished English painter, earned his bread at the carpenter’s trade until his majority, but before his death became professor of painting in the Royal Academy. Amyot, the brilliant scholar, and professor of Greek, Hebrew, and Latin, who is ranked among those who have contributed most towards the perfection of the French language, learned to write upon birch-bark with charcoal, while he lived on a loaf of bread per day. This man rose to be grand almoner of France, and

GENIUS IN SUNSHINE AND SHADOW. T proved that courage, perseverance, and genius need no ancestors.} | | _ Akenside, the English didactic poet, wit, essayist, and physician, author of the “ Pleasures of the Imagination,” was a butcher’s boy. His developed genius caused him to be appointed to the Queen’s household. Sir Humphry Davy was an apothecary’s apprentice - in his youth. Matthew Prior, the English poet and diplomatist, began life as a charity scholar. Rollin, famous for his “ Ancient History,” was the son of a poor Parisian cutler, and began life at an iron-forge. James Barry,-the eminent historical painter, was in his minovity a foremast hand on board an Irish coasting-vessel. D’Alembert, the remarkable French mathematician, author, and academician, was at birth a poor foundling in the streets of Paris, though it must be added that he was the illegitimate and discarded son of Madame de Tencin, one of the wicked- _ est, most profligate, most cynical, and ablest of the high-placed women of France. D’Alembert scorned her? proffered help when she, learning that he was the offspring of one of her desultory amours, attempted to assist him by her money and patronage. He lived austerely poor, and his love was lavished, not on his natural, or rather unnatural, mother, but on the

1 “What can they see in the longest kingly line in Europe,” asks Sir Walter Scott, “save that it runs back to a successful soldier ?” ; ,

2 When approached by Madame de Tencin, who was finally eager to acknowledge so distinguished a son, he replied : — ‘¢ Je ne connais qu'une mére, c’est la vitriére.”

indigent woman who had picked him up in the street, and who by self-denial had enabled him to obtain sustenance and education. As soon as he was old enough to realize his true situation, he said, “ I have no name, but with God’s help I will make one!” The time came when Catherine II. of Russia offered him one hundred thousand franes per annum to become the educator of her son, which he declined.

Béranger, the lyric poet of France, whose effectiveness and purity of style defy criticism, was at one time a barefooted orphan on the boulevards of the great city. His verses, bold, patriotic, and satirical, were in every mouth among the masses of his countrymen, contributing more than any other cause to produce the revolution of 1830.1 He had the noble independence to refuse all official recognition under government. Rachel, it will be remembered, was in her childhood a street-ballad singer. A resident of the French capital once pointed out to the writer a spot on the Champs Elysées where at the age of twelve, so pale as to seem scarcely more than a shadow, she used to appear daily, accompanied by her brother. .A rude cloth was spread on the ground, upon which she stood and recited tragic scenes from: Corneille and Racine, or sang patriotic songs for pennies, accompanied upon the violin by her brother.

1 I knew a very wise man that believed if a man were per- ‘mitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who should make the laws of a nation. — Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun.

Her attitudes, gestures, and voice always captivated a crowd of people. Rachel was a Jewish pedler’s daughter, though she was born in Switzerland; and in these youthful days she wore a Swiss costume upon the boulevards.!

Boccaccio, the most famous of Italian novelists, was the illegitimate son of a Florentine tradesman, and began life as a merchant’s clerk. It is well known that Shakspeare borrowed the plot of “ All’s Well that Ends Well” from Boccaccio.? In fact, the “ Decamerone” furnished him with plots for several of

1 Rachel made her début at the Théatre Francais of Paris, in 1838. She came to this country in 1855, and performed in our Eastern cities. Three years later she died of consumption, near Cannes, in the South of France. When she was giving one of her readings before the Duke of Wellington, she perceived that all her audience were ignorant of the French language except the Duke himself. She went on, however, at her best, consoling herself that he at least understood her. After it was over, the Duke approached the great actress, and said: “ Mademoiselle, our guests have had a great advantage over me ; they have had the happiness of hearing you : I am as deaf as a post.”

2 Hazlitt, after remarking that Shakspeare’s play of “ All’s Well that Ends Well” is taken from Boccaccio, adds: “The poet has dramatized the original novel with great skill and comic spirit, and has preserved all the beauty of character and sentiment without improving upon it, which is impossible.” In the town of Certaldo, Tuscany, the house in which Boccaccio was born is shown to curious travellers. On the fagade is an inscription speaking of the small house and a name which filled the world. “ Before seven years of age,” says Boccaccio, “when as yet I had met with no stories, was without a master, and hardly knew my letters, I had a natural talent for fiction, and produced some small tales.” eet his plays. Chaucer derived from the same source his poem of the “ Knight’s Tale.” We never hear shallow people reflecting upon the Bard of Avon for taking some of his plots from earlier writers, and weaving about them the golden threads of his superb genius, without recalling Dryden’s remark relative to Ben Jonson’s adaptations and translations from the classics, in such plays as “ Catiline ” and “ Sejanus.” ‘‘He invades authors,’ says Dryden, “like a monarch; and what would be theft in other writers is but victory in him.” Sterne’s idea upon the same subject also suggests itself. “As monarchs have a right,’ he says, “to call in the specie of a State and raise its value by their own impression, so are there certain prerogative geniuses who are above plagiaries, who cannot be said to steal, but from their improvement of a thought, rather to borrow it, and repay the commonwealth of letters with interest again, and may more properly be said to adopt than to kidnap a sentiment, by leaving it heir to their own fame.” Columbus, who gave a new world to the old, was a weayer’s son, and in his youth he earned his bread as a cabin-boy in a coasting-vessel which sailed from Genoa. The story of the great Genoese pilot possesses a more thrilling interest than any narrative which the imagination of poet or romancer has ever conceived. His name flashes a bright ray over the mental darkness of the period in which he lived. In imagination one sees him wandering for years from court to court, begging the necessary means wherewith to prosecute his inspired purpose,! and finally, after successfully accomplishing his mission, languishing in chains and in prison.

How naturally Halleck’s invocation to Death, in ‘‘ Marco Bozarris,’ occurs to us here, as the hero, when his object has been attained, joyfully faces the grim monarch : “Thy grasp is welcome as the hand Of brother in a foreign land ; Thy summons welcome as the cry That told the Indian isles were nigh, To the world-seeking Genoese, When the land wind from woods of palm

And orange-groves and fields of balm Blew o’er the Haytian seas.”

De Foe, the author of “ Robinson Crusoe,” and of over two hundred other books, was a hosier by trade, the son of a London butcher named James Foe. The particle De was added by the son without other authority than the suggestion of his own fancy. Cardinal Wolsey and Kirke White were also sons of butchers.

Claude Lorraine, the glorious colorist, whose very name has become a synonym in art, was in youth employed as a pastry-cook. Moliére, the great French dramatist and actor, who presents one of the most

1 The author has stood upon the Bridge of Pinos, at Granada, from whence Columbus, discouraged and nearly heart-broken, was recalled by Isabella, after having been denied and dismissed, as he supposed, for the last time. The messenger of the relenting queen overtook the great pilot at the bridge, and conducted him back to the Hall of the Ambassadors, in the Alhambra.

remarkable instances of literary success known to history, was the son of a tapestry-maker, and was himself at one time apprenticed to a tailor, and afterwards became a valet-de-chambre. When Moliére was valet to Louis XIII., he had already appeared upon the stage, and was rather sneered at by the other members of the king’s household. The generous monarch observed this, and determined to put a stop to it: “Iam told you have short commons here, Moliére, and some of my people decline to serve you,” said Louis, as he rose from his breakfast one day. “Sit down here at my table. I warrant you are hungry.” And the king cut him a portion of chicken and put it upon his plate just at the moment when a distinguished member of the royal household entered. ‘* You see me,” said the king, “giving Moliere his breakfast, as some of my people do not think him good enough company for themselves.” From that hour the royal valet was treated with due consideration. William Cobbett, the English author and vigorous political writer, was a poor farmer’s boy and entirely self-educated. Izaak Walton, the delightful biographist and miscellaneous author, whose ‘“ Complete Angler” would make any man’s name justly famous, was for years a linen-draper in London. Pope and Southey were the sons of linen-drapers.

How rapidly instances of the triumphs of genius over circumstances multiply upon us when the mind is permitted to roam at will through the long vista of the past! Cervantes, the Spanish Shakspeare, whose

“Don Quixote” is as much a classic! as “ Hamlet,” was a common foot-soldier in the army of Castile. In 1575 he was captured by an Algerine corsair and carried as a slave to Algiers, where he endured the most terrible sufferings. He was finally ransomed and returned to Spain. Alexandre Dumas’s grandmother was an African slave. Hugh Miller, author, editor, poet, distinguished naturalist, whose clear, choice Saxon-English caused the Edinburgh “ Review” to ask, “Where could this man have acquired his style?” was a stone-mason, and his only college was a stone-quarry.?

Keats, the sweetest of English poets, whose delicacy” of fancy and beauty of versification are “a joy forever,” was born in a stable. Oliver Cromwell, one of the most extraordinary men in English history,

1 Disraeli tells us that the French ambassador to Spain, meeting Cervantes, congratulated him on the great success and reputation gained by his “ Don Quixote ;”” whereupon the author whispered in his ear: “ Had it not been for the Inquisition, I should have made my book much more entertaining.” When Cervantes was a captive, and in prison at Algiers, he concerted a plan to free himself and his comrades. One of them traitorously betrayed the plot. They were all conveyed before the Dey of Algiers, who promised them their lives if they would betray the contriver of the plot. “J was that person,” replied Cervantes ; “save my companions, and let me perish.” The Dey, struck with his noble confession, spared his life and permitted them all to be ransomed.

2“The Testimony of the Rocks,” a noble and monumental work, by Hugh Miller, was published in 1857. The night following its completion its author shot himself through the heart. The overworked brain had given out, and all was chaos. He had sense enough left to write a few loving lines to his wife and children, and to say farewell.

famous as a citizen, great as a general, and greatest as a ruler, was the son of a malt-brewer. Howard, the philanthropist and author, whose name stands a monument of Christian fame, was at first a grocer’s boy. Rossini, one of. the greatest of modern composers, was the son of an itinerant musician and a strolling actress. Andrea del Sarto was the son of a tailor, and took his name from his father’s trade. Perino del Vaga was born in poverty and nearly starved in his boyhood. Perugino, whose noble painting of the ‘Infant Christ and the Virgin” adorns the Albani Palace at Rome, grew up in want and misery. We all remember the story of the shepherd-boy Giotto, who finally came to be so eminent a painter, and the intimate friend of Dante; like Michael Angelo, he was an architect and sculptor. Paganini, one of the greatest of instrumental performers that ever ‘lived, was born in poverty and was illegitimate. He gained enormous sums of money by his wonderful — exhibitions and musical compositions, but was spoiled by adulation, becoming reckless and dissipated. His performances in the cities of Europe created a furore before unparalleled in the history of music, and never since surpassed.

Wilson the unequalled ornithologist, Dr. Livingstone the heroic missionary and African traveller, and Tannahill! the Scottish poet,—author of that

1 Falling into a state of morbid despondency and mental derangement, Tannahill committed suicide, by drowning, in his thirty-sixth year. James Hogg, the “ Ettrick Shepherd,” visited familiar and favorite song, “Jessie, the Flower of Dumblane,” — earned their living in youth as journeymen weavers. Joost van den Vondel, the national poet of Holland, was a hosier’s apprentice. Moliére, already referred to, began his career as a journeyman tailor, but occasionally his maternal grandfather took him to the play, and thus were sown the seeds which led to his greatness as a dramatic author and actor. Samuel Woodworth, author of the “ Old Oaken Bucket,” one of the sweetest lyrics in our language, waS a journeyman printer. Richard Cobden, statesman, economist, and author, was a poor Sussex farmer’s son, whose youthful occupation was that of tending sheep. John Bright, the intimate friend and coadjutor of Cobden, one of the greatest, most eloquent, and most successful of English reformers, was the son of a cotton-spinner. Lord ClydeSthe successful general who: crushed the rebellion in India, and who was made a peer of England, was the son of a carpenter. The motto of his life, always inscribed upon the fly-leaf of his pocket memorandum-book, was: “ By means of patience, common-sense, and time, “ impossibilities become possible.”

John Bunyan,! the author of “ Pilgrim’s Progress,” the solace and delight of millions, and a text-book for him a short time before his death. ‘“ Farewell,” said Tannahill, as he grasped his brother poet’s hand; “ we shall never meet again |”

1 One of Bunyan’s biographers tells us his library consisted of two books, — the Bible and Fox’s “ Book of Martyrs.” The latter work, in three volumes, is preserved in the Bedford town library, all future time, was a tinker. His great work is said to have obtained a larger circulation than any other English book except the translation of the Bible. Benjamin Franklin, statesman, philosopher, epigrammatist, was a tallow-chandler.! Nathaniel Bowditch, the eminent mathematician, was a cooper’s apprentice. He was twenty-one years of age before he may be said to have begun his education, but in his prime was a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, and was offered the chair of mathematics in Harvard College. Hiram Powers, the first sculptor from this country to win European fame, was brought up a ploughboy on a Vermont farm; his“ Greek Slave” gave him high rank among modern sculptors. Elihu Burritt, the remarkable linguist, was a Connecticut horse-shoer. Whitefield, the eloquent English preacher and father of the and contains Bunyan’s name at the foot of the titlepages written by himself. Bunyan’s crime, for which he was imprisoned twelve years, was teaching plain country people the knowledge of the Scriptures and the practice of virtue.

1 Is it generally known that among the accomplishments of his after years was that of music and an instrumental performer ? Leigh Hunt says that “ Dr. Franklin offered to teach my mother the guitar, but she was too bashful to become his pupil. She regretted this afterwards, possibly from having missed so illustrious a master. Her first child, who died, was named after him.”

In his Autobiography Franklin says: “At ten years of age I was called home to assist my father in his occupation, which was that of a soap-boiler and tallow-chandler, a business to which he had served no apprenticeship, but which he embraced on his arrival in New England, because he found his own, that of a dyer, in too little request. I was accordingly employed in cutting the - wicks, filling the moulds,’’ etc.

sect of Calvinistic Methodists, was in youth the stableboy of an English inn. Cardinal Wolsey, chief minister of Henry VIII., was brought up to follow his father’s humble calling of a butcher. Horne Tooke, the English wit, priest, lawyer, and genius, was the son of a poulterer.1 Correra, afterwards president of Guatemala, was born in poverty, and for years was a drummer-boy in the army, where he was laughed at for saying that the world should some day hear from him, being reminded that his present business was to make a noise in the world. But he meant what he said, and acted under Lord Clyde’s motto. He rose by degrees to the highest position in the gift of his countrymen. “To the persevering mortal the blessed immortals are swift,’ says Zoroaster. Ebenezer Elliott, the English “ Corn-Law Rhymer,”? was a blacksmith, but a poet by nature, and his songs

1 His original name was John Horne, but being adopted and educated by William Tooke, he assumed his name. His humble birth being suspected by the proud striplings at Eton, when he was questioned as to his father he replied, “He was a Turkey merchant!” He was imprisoned for a year because he said that certain Americans were ‘‘ murdered” by the king’s troops at Lexington !

2 Elliott, the Corn-Law Rhymer, was no pander to popular cries unless they were founded on reason. Being asked, “What is a communist?” he answered, “One who has yearnings for equal division of unequal earnings. Idler or bungler, he is willing to fork out his penny and pocket your shilling.” Whipple says: “ His poetry could hardly be written by a man who was not physically strong. You can hear the ring of his anvil, and see the sparks fly off from his furnace, as you read his verses.” 2 created a political revolution in his native land, though unlike Béranger’s, in France, it was a peaceful revolution. He was ever a true champion of the poor and oppressed. In the latter portion of his life he was in easy pecuniary circumstances. William Lloyd Garrison,! the beloved philanthropist, orator, and writer, was born in poverty, and was early apprenticed to a shoemaker, but became a journeyman printer before his majority. He suffered~ imprisonment for his opinions’ sake, and may be said to have been the father of Abolitionism in America; fortunately living long enough to see the grand effort of his life crowned with success, in the emancipation of the blacks and the abolishment of slavery throughout the length and breadth of his native land. Kepler, the famous German astronomer, was the son of a poor innkeeper, and though enjoying royal patronage, often felt the pressure of poverty. Coleridge said: “ Galileo was a great genius and so was Newton; but it would take two or three Galileos and Newtons to make one Kepler.” We owe our knowledge of the laws of the | planetary system to him.