Literary Workers: Or Pilgrims to the Temple of Honour

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Preface

ITTLE apology, it is hoped, is needed for a work of this description. The subject will ever be fresh and fascinating.

If there is something to interest us in the story of the humblest of our fellow-creatures, how much more in the lives of the most highly gifted ?

There are various productions bearing more or less, upon the same topic, and notably amongst these stands the elder Disraeli's sketch of the Literary Character, to which the writer is largely indebted. It is not in any spirit of rivalry that he adds another to the list ; but in the belief that the intrinsic charm of the theme will float this and many other volumes of the kind.

The book is intended more especially for literary aspirants, and its purpose will be answered if it affords any genial stimulus to readers who may wish to rank amongst the toilers with the Pen.

The author has endeavoured to invest literary genius with something of a personal character by tracing its story (cursorily, of course) in the form of a biography from the cradle to the grave.

Contents

CHAP.

I. THE CRADLE OF GENIUS, II, EARLY MANIFESTATIONS,

III. IN TRAINING, ....

Chapter I. The Cradle Of Genius

To be born is, of course, the first point in the life of a genius. It is a way we have in this world, whatever may be the fashion elsewhere ; and with this good old practice, the most gifted, as well as the most stupid, must fain comply. But when, where, and of whom, are questions which must have a special interest in the case of celebrated individuals. Was it at the right time, in the right place, and under the right conditions ?

For every man, however humble, there is probably some particular niche in the community, some work which he could admirably perform if we could only ascertain the precise purpose he was intended to fulfil. Occasionally, as we all know, and sometimes painfully experience, people seem to get fearfully misplaced. Round men are often found in square holes, and square men in cylindrical quarters. Dean Swift was hustled by circumstances into the pulpit, where, as he complained, he could only preach pamphlets, when he ought to have been in Parliament ; and we can easily conceive what a lustreless career Marlborough might have led had he been born in piping times of peace, with a George Fox for his father and a Hannah Fry for his mother.

In the quaint old days when the heavenly orbs were supposed to interest themselves in sublunary aflfairs, and indeed to preside over human destinies, the exact moment of a person's

A nativity was a point of considerable importance to himself, and indirectly to his fellow-creatures as well. But when a child of genius appears it would be of far more consequence to inquire what literary stars are in the ascendant, and to show what influences, social and intellectual, beneficent or malignant, are likely to affect his development.

Nothing can be more capricious, apparently, than the principle upon which this enviable prerogative is distributed amongst men. The Supernals have a way of their own — sunt superis suajura^ as the old heathen said.*

Every now and then, as we may figuratively report, there enters this planet a Royal Messenger, with a commission of genius in his hand. Invisible, unfortunately, he is to us ; but if we could recognise him in his sun-clad livery, with what curiosity should we follow his footsteps to ascertain at what door he will pause. Upon whose head will he place the unfading wreath of renown ? Not at yonder princely mansion does he stop ; stately halls and gilded saloons he seems to eschew ; even the most fashionable localities are passed without a halt in his step. When he wanted a Shakespeare he went to the house of a wool-comber at Stratford ; a Scott, to the office of an attorney at Edinburgh ; a Moore, to the shop of a grocer in Dublin. At other times, when sent out with the mantle of poetic inspiration, he found Burns at the plough, Chatterton at a charity school, Hogg attending his sheep on the mountain side, Ben Jonson with a mason's trowel in hand ; and John Milton with a schoolmaster's ferule on his desk.

* * Events may be calculated, predicted — Spirits never. No earthly oracle announces the appearance of genius ; the unfathomable will of the Creator suddenly calls to it — Be.' This always seems to me to involve one of the strongest proofs of a God, all -present indeed, but personal and conscious.' — The Worship of Genius , by Professor C. UUmann.

Diving down now, however, into some obscure street, let us suppose that he taps at the door of a lowly dwelling, where he discovers the object of his quest slumbering peacefully in its cradle. Bending over the unconscious infant, and breathing gently on its fair white brow, he bestows upon the child those splendid endowments which will make it famous throughout all time. This is the baptism of intellect, which whoever receives should hold himself consecrated to a life of good works and gallant exertion. By the process he is constituted one of nature's peers and priests, and to him, if to any one, should apply the fine old maxim, noblesse oblige.

Crowns, as we know, run in families ; coronets pass from heir to heir. But the highest distinction we have in this planet — the diadem of genius — is plainly conferred without the slightest regard to blood, or wealth, or position. In many countries trades were, and in some still are, hereditary. Even the executioner's office has been handed down from father to son ; and there have been successive Sansons who have lopped off heads, as there have been successive Bourbons who claimed the right of sending those heads to the block. But had the duty of ministering at the high altar of Nature, like the duties of the Jewish priesthood, been confined to any particular class, a despotism of intellect, not necessarily associated with conscience, might have been established, and the world would probably have been very much the worse for the arrangement.

William Godwin and, indeed, greater thinkers than he have expressed an opinion that it might be possible to make genius a transmissible quality. From sire to son, from son to grandchild, could not the divine faculty, under due management, be handed down like a title to an estate ? Of course this must be regarded as a mere philosophical vagary. Facts seem to be completely against it. Pedigree is utterly indifTerent to talent. Cicero's son, it is well known, was a half-wit, Addison's only child was little better than an idiot, Milton's daughters inherited none of their parent's talent, and Shakespeare's limited issue never distinguished themselves either in the dramatic way or in any other literary line. It would be in vain to inquire who was the heir of Bacon's intellect ; or upon which of his progeny did Goethe's many-coloured mantle light? Were the qualities which gave Cromwell supreme command to be found in his successor Richard ; and did not the big brain and master mind of Napoleon shrink into the puniest dimensions in the person of the Duke of Reichstadt? Certainly it is not given to many parents to be at the same time the offspring of one celebrity and the author of another. 'When I was a boy/ said the banker Mendelssohn, ' people used to call me the son, and now they call me the father, of the great Mendelssohn.'

That intellect indeed is not essentially dependent upon what might be called parental constitution, either bodily or mental, is proved by the fact that whilst one member of a family may be an Admirable Crichton, another may be an elaborate dunce. Given a couple, each with six fingers upon their hands, and we might speculate with some little hopefulness upon the birth of a child equally blest in the digital department; but if the greatest masculine genius of the day were to marry the greatest feminine prodigy, it is quite possible but their heir might be little better than a dolt. * The son of the learned pig, if he had one,' said Sir Walter Scott, writing to his son, * would be a mere brute to make bacon of.'

Certain it is that no man has yet been able to convert his genius into an heirloom ; for even if he succeeded in bequeathing it by will to his child, and the Revenue people were to allow it to pass without making a charge for duty (an almost inconceivable supposition), it would be pretty sure to vanish before it could reach his grandchild. It has been observed that there is scarcely a single inheritor of the name, and certainly none of the greatness, of any famous British poet whose distinction bore date prior to the middle of the last century. If our House of Lords must necessarily be composed of men of genius, could the peerage be granted otherwise than for life merely ? Mr. Galton might tell us what the average stature of children would probably be, if that of their parents were known ; but it is to be feared that he could give no reliable indication of their mental endowments, even if the father were a Socrates, and the mother an Aspasia or a Madame de Stael. Upon this point indeed, what can be more significant than the fact that from the same couple may spring a genius and a dolt ; for who has not met with families where one brother or sister seems to have appropriated, scandalously one might say if it were intentionally, nearly all the brains of the rest ?

Still, in these days of Darwinism, it would be well to try whether something might not be' made of the hereditary hypothesis. In China the descendants of Confucius are exempt from imperial taxation. Would it not be a pleasing experiment, if our Government were to offer a similar privilege to any family which would engage or contrive to produce one genius in each successive generation for a few centuries to come ? No greater temptation, it is presumed, could be offered to a genuine Briton than freedom from the visits of the tax-gatherers. Would it not be a proud position for any man to occupy in the Empire if he and his posterity alone, amongst their sorely burdened brethren, could snap their fingers at those grim functionaries, and even speak without emotion, still less dismay, of the

Chancellor of the Exchequer, and his demands upon the National pocket ?

At the same time the experiment, if successful, would be a splendid testimony to the doctrine of Evolution. In fact, some such hereditary move may be said to constitute a needful item in the great drama of development. For it is impossible to suppose that after running through millions of previous stages. Nature reached the last when the anthropoid ape graduated into Man. The sheer momentum of the theory, if we may so speak, must cany it on through countless succeeding dispensations ; indeed the power of evolution ought to augment rapidly as the intelligence of each successive product improves. The human animal being therefore on its way to some superior organisation in which mind must necessarily assume a corresponding elevation, it seems not only pardonable but compulsory to infer that something like genius will become the universal instead of the occasional endowment of the race. Should not the Darwinians therefore lay this question seriously to heart? On the one hand, the point seems vital to the credit of their theory: on the other, the glory of assisting Nature in her operations, and contributing to the next grand product of development should put them on their mettle ; for this must undoubtedly be the greatest advance ever yet effected in our planet

Since, then, the highest of all secular gifts is conferred upon men with so little respect of person or position, the fortunate receiver need not trouble himself if he does not find a single drop of azul sangre — ^the blue blood of the aristocracy — running in his veins. Let him be as obscure as he may in his genealogy, he holds his patent of precedence direct from the true fountain of honour. Bishop Warburton once observed in the House of Lords, more caustically perhaps than correctly, that he never knew a person boast of rank * who had anything else to boast of/ At a certain banquet; indeed, the brilliant Sheridan indulged in a vaunt that he was descended from the loins of sovereigns, upon which Dr. Spry whispered, to a neighbour, * Quite true ; the last time I saw his father he was performing the King of Denmark.*. But it is more than probable that Brinsley was half intoxicated when he laid claim to royal descent

Very different was it with Samuel Johnson, when that worthy paid his attentions to his future wife — an occasion on which a man generally puts his best foot foremost, or, at any rate, keeps his worst one in the shade. He told her frankly that one of his relations had been hanged ; to which the lady replied with equal naXvet^, and with admirable magnanimity, that though none of her connections, to her knowledge, had attained that painful distinction, she had twenty who merited it. But might not pretty much the same be said of numerous unsuspecting families? The difference, said a 'celebrated man,' quoted by Archbishop Whately, between a person with * a long line of noble ancestors and an upstart, is, that the one knows for certain what the other only conjectures as highly probable, that several of his forefathers deserved hanging.'

In after-life it is true, when praised by the public and petted by titled dowagers, a successful writer may possibly resent his humble origin, and feel himself aggrieved by his parentage. Not very respectful may be his feelings towards his sire, if living, or his veneration for his mother, if dead. He may take the fifth commandment with considerable qualification. The Poet Mark Akenside, the son of a butcher, was condemned to a perpetual limp because a cleaver, falling on his foot whilst a child, had maimed him for life. To him, and, as he perversely concluded, to others, the defect was a standing advertisement of the profession to which the family belonged. It was therefore an unpardonable event, which all the Pleasures of Imagination and all the honours derived from his great poem could not completely efface.

But apart from mere social distinctions, is it not a pleasant possibility that any household may turn out a genius ? What mother can say that the child whose cradle she is rocking will not take his place in the peerage of Intellect, or become one of the Lords of Literature? What father is there who may not indulge the bright dream that his name may be ennobled by the lisping lad whose eagerness for knowledge, and whose passion for dissecting every toy he receives, indicate a mind of a particularly inquisitive and possibly philosophical turn? Can he refrain from fancying that to be the author of an author implies that he has in some mystic way or other endowed the latter with intellect as well as with flesh and blood ?

It is very true that an honest speculator upon destiny is bound to remember that the infant's lot may be precisely the reverse. Yonder boy may prove to be a clever rogue, a dashing adventurer, or a brilliant profligate. Nay, innocent as he now looks, it may be his fate to close his days at Dartmoor Prison, or to part from the sun on the treacherous floor of the scaffold ' Mirabeau's head,' observed Chateaubriand, ' was moulded either for a throne or a gallows.' Nobody could say for which at first. He came close to the former when he ruled the people by his eloquence, and was looked up to by his sovereign as the bulwark of the monarchy ; he came near to the latter, when he had appropriated, as his brother remarked, every vice under the sun, .* except one which he dared not practise ; ' and certainly, had he lived a little longer, he would have proved one of the most prominent victims of the guillotine.

* Tom will one day be hanged/ said Gainsborough's father, when he found that the lad had attached his signature, imitated with wonderful accuracy, to a request for a holiday. It was a case of glaring forgery, and he saw that it might easily be followed up by more serious pranks which the l^w, and possibly the executioner, might be called upon to cure. When, however, the angry parent was shown some of the boy's sketches, in which he had copied nature with equal fidelity, but with much less criminality, he gleefully exclaimed, * Tom will one day be a genius.' Nor was the prediction falsified, for the young rascal proved to be, as Reynolds remarked, one of Nature's most faithful, if not most poetical, portrayers.

But how shall parents know whether their infant offspring belongs to the aristocracy of intellect ? Bees of good augury don't come now to settle upon cradled lips as they once did, or are reported to have done (pretty much the same thing), in the days of Plato, Pindar, and other classical worthies. The Delphic oracle was consulted by the parents of Euripides in anticipation of his birth. The answer was particularly gracious. Apollo assured Mnesarchus that he should have a son whom Greece would honour, and upon whose head the victor's crown would certainly be placed. There was some ambiguity, it is true, in this august intimation (inseparable, it would seem, from the Pythian revelations), for the delighted father proceeded to train the boy's muscles, under the impression that athletic success at the Olympic games was implied ; whereas, as every one knows, it is the produce of his mind alone which has given him scholastic immortality.

Nature occasionally offers some hints in the size of the head, the breadth of the brow, the character of the features. But these admit of such qualifications that it is by no means easy to lO LITERARY WORKERS.

say honestly how they should be interpreted. Bulk of person is certainly no criterion ; for if it were, what would have become of Newton, who, as we are informed, was so diminutive that he might have been stowed away in a * quart mug,' or of Archbishop Whately, who soon after his birth was weighed against a miserable turkey and found decidedly wanting ? Scores indeed of our celebrated men would infallibly have been tumbled into the cavern at Mount Taygetus in their infancy had they been born in Sparta.

It might be very convenient if mothers had prophetic intimations of a nascent genius (provided such intimations were reliable) like Sir Thomas More's, who saw all her children file before her in a dream, one of them having a countenance which shone with a brilliancy far surpassing the rest Speaking generally, it would scarcely be safe to accept maternal testimony on such a point ; but some little faith may be accorded to this vision, for the simple reason that one child only was selected for distinction, whereas some parents have been known to ' try it on ' with Nature, by assuming, until palpably contradicted by facts, that most of their ducklings were swans.

Nor could a paternal certificate of coming greatness always be accredited with as much confidence as it was in the case of the elder Ampere, who wrote to his wife the day before his head fell under the knife of the guillotine, ' there is nothing which I don't expect from our son.'

Jeremy Bentham's father was determined that his boy should take rank as a prodigy. Every act or utterance which could be construed into an expression of talent was accordingly carried to his credit with Nature ; and if the fond parent could have had his own way he would have debited the world with the greatest genius of modern times. There was much in the youth, it is

THE CRADLE OF GENIUS. II

true ; but it can scarcely be said, spite of the adulation he ultimately received, that Jeremy occupies a particularly conspicuous position in the British Valhalla.

But least of all would it answer to accept a boy's own testimony to his merits as soon as he could deliver an opinion upon the point; otherwise, would not all the places of honour be speedily filled by mediocrities, if not by positive nonentities ? So fully was St. Simon (the Socialist) impressed, whilst a youth, with a conviction of his importance in the scheme of creation, that he had himself roused every morning by the summons, * Awake, M. le Comte, you have great things to do.' An excellent riveil this would be for us all, if we could only take it modestly, and proceed to dress with a full sense of our responsibility, and a determination to do our duty both to Heaven and Earth ; but in many cases, it is to be feared, the only effect would be to send the sleeper to rest again, under the firm persuasion that when he did rise he could do in ten minutes what another could not accomplish in less than a day.

But wanting or distrusting mere physical indications of genius in a great measure, we must resort to mental tests. Amongst the earliest suggestions of a superior intellect, a passionate love of reading may generally be noted. Not, be it observed, a mere liking for childish literature, for works crowded with illustrations, and specially with gaudy pictures of giants or impossible fairies, or even of very mundane pirates and freebooters. This kind of appetite is almost as much a matter of ordinary juvenile experience as the measles or chicken-pox. Some children look upon a book as a girl does upon a doll, or a boy upon a peg-top — they are matters of mere passing amusement. The poet Shenstone, when a very small urchin, always expected his mother to bring him a volume of some kind or other, when she went to market ; but failing to do so on some occasions, the good creature, with more cunning than candour, covered a piece of wood with cloth, so as to resemble a book as much as possible, and presented it to the lad on his retiring to rest The little dupe, it is said, went contentedly to bed with the treacherous treasure under his pillow. Of course it is the use which a boy makes of his reading, and the stimulus it exerts on the brain, that render it valuable as a test of character, or a revealer of capacity. There may be no merit in devouring a whole library, if it means the simple gratification of curiosity, or the indulgence of an indolent mind in dreams of unreality. But where a genuine passion for knowledge exists, there can be few more rapturous sensations than those of a young soul, when ushered into a new world, either of facts or of fancies. And, perhaps, there is no circumstance more expressive on the one hand, of the benevolence which has been lavished in the constitution of the intellect, nor, on the other, of the destiny which that intellect was created to fulfil ; for, however homely may be the material on which the mind fastens, its ardour seems to attest its immortality. For souls like these, books are the true sorcerers. There is magic distilled from every page ; there is witchery in almost every word. Dead men are called up from their graves to tell their own tales ; the past comes and goes, as if it were a willing slave to the present ; the chambers of science seem to be unlocked, and the eye catches a glimpse of their many marvels ; the mind wanders along the highways of History, and hastens to see Rome built, or Troy burnt ; or, entering the realm of pure Fiction, it disports itself in ecstasy amidst the strange shapes and the shining phantoms with which that airy region is peopled.

Niebuhr, the historian, when a child, read with a sense of reality which seems to have been overpowering. The war with

Turkey, in the year 1787, excited his mind so vividly, that in his very dreams he fancied he was poring over the gazettes, and actually repeated the intelligence aloud in his sleep. Nay, those nightly talks included anticipations, which were so frequently realised, that they might have almost been regarded as approaches to prophecy. So, when studying the ancient authors, he launched himself into their life as fully as if it were his own, and became for the occasion a naturalised denizen of the old classical world. At such times he was as much a Greek as Xenophon or Herodotus ; as much a Roman as Tacitus or Livy ; and the tragic poets threw him into such a tempest of emotion that he could not bear to read more than a few pages at a spell.

When, therefore, a parent sees a child eschewing the ordinary sports of his age, and voluntarily leaving the playground, to enjoy a solitary ramble in the woods ; or when he finds the lad perched in a tree, where he sits reading, strapped to the branches, as was the case with young Herder, by the hour together ; or when, bounding suddenly into the boy's chamber at dead of night, he discovers him deep in study by the taper's glimmering light^^ — he may safely inquire whether he has not got a somewhat uncommon kind of creature on his hands. It does not exactly follow that he is the owner of a genius, but he may fairly look upon the love of reading and of musing as possible symptoms of early consecration. In other words, the youth finds a world within himself as well as a world without, and of all employments, the exploration of these purple-lighted realms is to him the most enchanting. Geniuses, says Menzel, do not grow like trees in a forest, but single and solitary. * I never played,' wrote Coleridge, who could scarcely be said to have passed through a genuine childhood at all, * except by myself, and then it was acting over what I had seen or read, or half one and half the other ; with a stick cutting down weeds and nettles, as one of the Seven Champions of Christendom.' Before he was eight years old* according to his own statement, he was no longer a boy but a character. When at Christ's Hospital, he might be seen sitting on a door-step, or crouching in a comer, whilst his mates were at play, immersed in some * grown up ' production ; for, during his stay at that institution, a generous stranger gave him the run of a circulating library, to which he did unlimited justice ; for, said he, * I read through the catalogue, folios and all, whether I understood them or did not understand them.'

Harriet Martineau, when a girl of seven years, was left at home one Sunday afternoon, and found upon the table an untempting volume in appearance, which, however, she took in hand, and began to read, attracted by the word * Satan.' It was Paradise Lost. She became deeply interested in the adventures of the fallen archangel. From that period up to the age of fourteen, she lived, as she said, * in heart, mind, and soul, in Milton.' The songster of chaos, the historian of heaven's wars, had set the whole universe in motion for her. Sightless himself he had awakened in her an inexpressible longing, * the secrets of the abyss to espy.' Her thirst for knowledge became unbounded. She had always a book in her pocket when walking, or a book in her lap whilst seated at meals ; and even when engaged in sewing she had some favourite poem at hand from which she took eager but stealthy draughts.

And who is that youth with the angel face, who is reading his way through the crowded streets of London, jostling the passengers, and coming into collision with lamp-posts, but too earnestly occupied with the Greek play he is perusing, to care what damage he does either to himself or others ? That is

Percy Bysshe Shelley, who pushed his wild way through the world pretty much upon the same principle — being so selfabsorbed, that it mattered little what mischief he did by his doctrines or example, provided he gave full play to the impetuous emotions which raged within him.

When Fichte was a boy of seven his father bought him the renowned adventures of Siegfried. The book opened out a realm of enchantment to the lad. Into this he flung himself so enthusiastically that he neglected his duties, and brought down punishment on his head. The chastisement affected him so severely that, in a spirit of contrition, he walked to the stream which ran hard by their habitation, and cast the dear but dangerous volume into the waters. Scarcely done, ere regretted. The child's heroism gave way when he saw his treasure launched and lost. Whilst weeping bitterly his father came up, and was naturally exasperated on learning that Johann had flung his gift in the stream. Thereupon he doubled the boy's woes by inflicting a supplemental castigation ; and when some time afterwards, on discovering the true motive, he presented his son with another work of the same alluring class, the youth begged permission to decline it, for fear he should again be led into temptation.