The literary character; or, The history of men of genius, drawn from their own feelings and confessions

Front matter

DRAMATIC LIBRARY.

Just published, in One Volume, with Portrait, Vignette, ana Index, price 24s. cloth,

THE WORKS OF BEN JONSON ;

Chapter II

Of the adversaries of literary men among themselves. — Matter-offact-men, and men of wit. — The political economists. — Of those "who abandon their studies. — Men in office. — The arbiters of public opinion. — Those who treat the pursuits of literature with levity . . . . . . . .5

Chapter III

Of artists, in the history of men of literary genius. — Their habits and pursuits analogous. — The nature of their genius is similar in their distinct works. — Shown by their parallel seras, and by a common end pursued by both . . . . . .15

Chapter IV

Of natural genius. — Minds constitutionally different cannot have an equal aptitude. — Genius not the result of habit and education. — Originates in peculiar qualities of the mind. — The predisposition of genius — A substitution for the white paper of b

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Chapter V

Youth of genius. — Its first impulses may be illustrated by its subsequent actions. — Parents have another association of the man of genius than we. — Of genius, its first habits. — Its melancholy. — Its reveries. — Its love of solitude. — Its disposition to repose. — Of a youth distinguished by his equals. — Feebleness of its first attempts. — Of genius not discoverable even in manhood. — The education of the youth may not be that of his genius. — An unsettled impulse, querulous till it finds its true occupation. — With .some, curiosity as intense a faculty as invention. — What the youth t first applies to is commonly his delight afterwards. — Facts of the decisive character of genius . 31

Chapter VI

The first studies. — The self-educated are marked by stubborn peculiarities. — Their errors. — Their improvement from the neglect or contempt they incur. — The history of self-education in Moses Mendelsohn. — Friends usually prejudicial in the

youth of genius A remarkable interview between Petrarch

in his first studies, and his literary adviser. — Exhortation . GO

Chapter VII

Of the irritability of genius. — Genius in society often in a state

of suffering Equality of temper more prevalent among men

of letters. — Of the occupation of making a great name. — Anxieties of the most successful. — Of the inventors. — Writers of learning. — Writers of taste. — Artists . . . .37

Chapter VIII

Tbe spirit of literature and the spirit of society. — The inventors. — Society offers seduction and not reward to. men of genius. — The notions of persons of fashion of men of genius. — The habitudes of the man of genius distinct from those of the man of society. — Study, meditation, and enthusiasm, the progress of genius. — The disagreement between the men of the world and the literary character . . . . . . . 1 1 ■">

CONTENTS. Vll

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Chapter IX

Conversations of men of genius. — Their deficient agreeableness may result from qualities -which conduce to their greatness. —

Slow-minded men not the dullest The conversationists not

the ablest writers. — Their true excellence in conversation consists of associations with their pursuits . . . .130

Chapter X

Literary solitude. — Its necessity. — Its pleasures. — Of visitors by profession. — Its inconveniences 145

Chapter XI

The meditations of genius. — A -work on the art of meditation not yet produced. — Predisposing the mind. — Imagination awakens imagination. — Generating feelings by music. — Slight habits. — .Darkness and silence, by suspending the exercise of our senses, increase the vivacity of our conceptions. — The arts of memory. — Memory the foundation of genius. — Inventions by several to preserve their own moral and literary character. — And to assist their studies. — The meditations of genius depend on habit. — Of the night-time. — A day of meditation should precede a day of composition. — Works of magnitude from slight conceptions. — Of thoughts never written. — The art of meditation exercised at all hours and places. — Continuity of attention the source of philosophical discoveries. — Stillness of meditation the first state of existence in genius . . .154

Chapter XII

The enthusiasm of genius. — A state of mind resembling awaking dream distinct from reverie. — The ideal presence distinguished

from the real presence The senses are really affected in the

ideal world, proved by a variety of instances. — Of the rapture or sensation of deep study in art, science, and literature. — Of perturbed feelings, in delirium. — In extreme endurance of attention. — And in visionary illusions. — Enthusiasts in literature and art — of their self-immolations . . . . .184

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Chapter XIII

Of the Jealousy of Genius — Jealousy often proportioned to the degree of genius. — A perpetual fever among Authors and Artists. — Instances of its incredible excess, among brothers and benefactors. — Of a peculiar species, where the fever consumes the sufferer, without its malignancy .... 210

Chapter XIV

Want of mutual esteem, among men of genius, often originates in a deficiency of analogous ideas. — It is not always envy or jealousy which induces men of genius to undervalue each other . 217

Chapter XV

Self-praise of genius. — The love of praise instinctive in the nature of genius A high opinion of themselves necessary for

their great designs. — The Ancients openly claimed their owu praise. — And several Moderns. — An author knows more of his merits than his readers. — And less of his defects. — Authors versatile in their admiration and their malignity . . .221

Chapter XVI

The domestic life of genius. — Defects of great compositions attributed to domestic infelicities. — The home of the literary character should be the abode of repose and silence. — Of the Father. — Of the Mother. — Of family genius. — Men of genius not more respected than other men in their domestic circle.

The cultivators of science and art do not meet on equal

terms with others, in domestic life. — Their neglect of those around them. — Often accused of imaginary crimes . . 238

Chapter XVII

The poverty of literary men. — Poverty, a relative quality. — Of the poverty of literary men in what degree desirable. — Extreme poverty. — Task-work. — Of gratuitous works. — A project to provide against the worst state of poverty among literary men . 250

CONTENTS. IX

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Chapter XVIII

The matrimonial state of literature. — Matrimony said not to be well suited to the domestic life of genius. — Celibacy a concealed cause of the early querulousness of men of genius. — Of unhappy unions. — Not absolutely necessary that the "wife should be a literary woman. — Of the docility and susceptibility of the higher female character. — A picture of a literary wife . . . 272

Chapter XIX

Literary friendships. — In early life. — Different from those of men of the world. — They suffer in unrestrained communication of their ideas, and bear reprimands and exhortations. — Unity of feelings. — A sympathy not of manners but of feelings. — Admit of dissimilar characters. — Their peculiar glory. — Their sorrow . 288

Chapter XX

The literary and the personal character. The personal dispositions of an author may be the reverse of those which appear in his

writings. Erroneous conceptions of the character of distant

authors. — Paradoxical appearances in the history of genius. — Why the character of the man may be opposite to that of his writings

ICHAPTER 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 313

Literature an avenue to glory.— An intellectual nobility not chimerical, but created by public opinion. — Literary honours of various nations. — Local associations with the memory of the man of genius 346

Chapter XXV

Influence of authors on society and of society on authors. — National tastes a source of literary prejudices. — True genius always the organ of its nation. — Master-writers preserve the distinct national character. — Genius the organ of the state of the age. —

Causes of its suppression in a people Often invented, but

neglected. — The natural gradations of genius. — Men of genius produce their usefulness in privacy. — The public mind is now the creation of the public writer. — Politicians affect to deny this principle. — Authors stand between the governors and the governed. — A view of the solitary author in his study. — They create an epoch in history — Influence of popular authors. — The immortality of thought. — The family of genius illustrated by their genealogy 361

Preface

For the fifth time I revise a subject which has occupied my inquiries from early life, with feelings still delightful, and an enthusiasm not wholly diminished.

Had not the principle upon which this work is constructed occurred to me in my youth, the materials which illustrate the literary character could never have been brought together. It was early in life that I conceived the idea of pursuing the history of genius by the similar events which had occurred to men of genius. Searching into literary history for the literary character, formed a course of experimental philosophy in which every new essay verified a former trial, and confirmed a former truth. By the great philosophical principle of induction, inferences were deduced and results established, which, however vague and doubtful in speculation, are irresistible when the appeal is made to facts as they relate to others, and to feelings which must be decided on as they are passing in our own breast.

Xll PREFACE.

It is not to be inferred from what I have here stated, that I conceive that any single man of genius will resemble every man of genius ; for not only man differs from man, but varies from himself in the different stages of human life. All that I assert is, that every man of genius will discover, sooner or later, that he belongs to the brotherhood of his class, and that he cannot escape from certain habits, and feelings, and disorders, which arise from the same temperament and sympathies, and are the necessary consequence of occupying the same position, and passing through the same moral existence. Whenever ?e compare men of genius with each other, the history of those who are no more, will serve as a perpetual commentary on our contemporaries. There are, indeed, secret feelings which their prudence conceals, or their fears obscure, or their modesty shrinks from, or their pride rejects ; but I have sometimes imagined that I have held the clue as they have lost themselves in their own labyrinth. I know that many, and some of great celebrity, have sympathised with the feelings which inspired these volumes; nor, while I have elucidated the idiosyncrasy of genius, have I less studied the habits and characteristics of the lovers of literature.

It has been considered that the subject of this work might have been treated with more depth of metaphysical disquisition, and there has since appeared an

PREFACE. Xlll

attempt to combine with this investigation the medical science. A work, however, should be judged by its design and its execution, and not by any preconceived notion of what it ought to be according to the critic, rather than the author. The nature of this work is dramatic rather than metaphysical. It offers a narration or a description ; a conversation or a monologue ; an incident or a scene.

Perhaps I have sometimes too warmly apologised for the infirmities of men of genius. From others we may hourly learn to treat with levity the man of genius because he is only such. Perhaps also I ma?f have been too fond of the subject, which has been for me an old and a favourite one — I may have exalted the literary character, beyond the scale by which society is willing to fix it. Yet what is this Society, so omnipotent, so all-judicial ? The society of to-day was not the society of yesterday. Its feelings, its thoughts, its manners, its rights, its wishes, and its wants, are different and are changed : alike changed or alike created by those very literary characters whom it rarely comprehends and often would despise. Let us no longer look upon this retired and peculiar class as useless members of our busy race. There are mental as well as material labourers. The first are not less necessary ; and as they are much rarer, so are they more precious. These are they whose " published labours" have benefited

XIV PREFACE.

mankind — these are they whose thoughts can alone rear that beautiful fabric of social life, which it is the object of all good men to elevate or to support. To discover truth and to maintain it, — to develop the powers, to regulate the passions, to ascertain the privileges of man, — such have ever been and such ever ought to be, the labours of Authors ! Whatever we enjoy of political and private happiness, our most necessary knowledge as well as our most refined pleasures, are alike owing to this class of men, and of these some for glory, and often from benevolence, have shut themselves out from the very beings whom they love, and for whom they labour.

Upwards of forty years have elapsed since, composed in a distant county, and printed at a provincial press, I published " An Essay on the Manners and Genius of the Literary Character." To my own habitual and inherent defects were superadded those of my youth. The crude production was however not ill received, for the edition disappeared, and the subject was found more interesting than the writer.

During a long interval of twenty years, this little work was often recalled to my recollection by several, and by some who have since obtained celebrity. They imagined that their attachment to literary pursuits had been strengthened even by so weak an effort. An extraordinary circumstance concurred with these opinions.

PREFACE. XV

A copy accidentally fell into my hands which had formerly belonged to the great poetical genius of our times, and the singular fact that it had been more than once read by him, and twice in two subsequent years at Athens, in 1810 and 1811, instantly convinced me that the volume deserved my renewed attention.

It was with these feelings that I was again strongly attracted to a subject from which, indeed, during the course of a studious life, it had never been long diverted. The consequence of my labours, was the publication, in 1818, of an octavo volume, under the title of " The Literary Character, illustrated by the History of Men of Genius, drawn from their own feelings and confessions."

In the Preface to this Edition, in mentioning the fact respecting Lord Byron, which had been the immediate cause of its publication, I added these words : " I tell this fact assuredly not from any little vanity which it may appear to betray ; — for the truth is, were I not as liberal and as candid in respect to my own productions, as I hope I am to others, I could not have been gratified by the present circumstance; for the marginal notes of the noble author convey no flattery ; — but amidst their pungency, and sometimes their truth, the circumstance that a man of genius could reperuse this slight effusion at two different periods of

XVI PREFACE.

his life, was a sufficient authority, at least for an author, to return it once more to the anvil."

Some time after the publication of this Edition of " The Literary Character," which was in fact a new work, I was shown, through the kindness of an English gentleman lately returned from Italy, a copy of it, which had been given to him by Lord Byron, and which again contained marginal notes by the noble author. These were peculiarly interesting, and were chiefly occasioned by observations on his character, which appeared in the work.

In 1822 I published a new edition of this work, greatly enlarged, and in two volumes. I took this opportunity of inserting the Manuscript Notes of Lord Byron, with the exception of one, which, however characteristic of the amiable feelings of the noble poet, and however gratifying to my own, I had no wish to obtrude on the notice of the public *.

* As everything connected with the reading of a mind like Lord Byron's is interesting to the philosophical inquirer, this note may now he preserved. On that passage of the Preface of the second Edition which I have already quoted, his Lordship was thus pleased to write :

" I was wrong, hut I was young and petulant, and probably wrote down any thing, little thinking that those observations would be betrayed to the author, whose abilities I have always respected, and whose works in general I have read oftener than perhaps those of any English author whatever, except such as treat of Turkey."

PREFACE. XV11

Soon after the publication of this third Edition, I received the following letter from his Lordship : —

%t Dear Sir, —

" If you will permit me to call you so, — I had some time ago taken up my pen at Pisa, to thank you for the present of your new edition of the ' Literary Character,' which has often been to me a consolation, and always a pleasure. I was interrupted, however, partly by business, and partly by vexation of different kinds, — for I have not very long ago lost a child by a fever, and I have had a good deal of petty trouble with the laws of this lawless country, on account of the prosecution of a servant for an attack upon a cowardly scoundrel of a dragoon, who drew his sword upon some unarmed Englishmen, and whom I had done the honour to mistake for an officer, and to treat like a gentleman. He turned out to be neither, — like many other with medals, and in uniform ; but he paid for his brutality with a severe and dangerous wound, inflicted by nobody knows whom, for, of three suspected, and two arrested, they have been able to identify neither ; which is strange, since he was wounded in the presence of thousands, in a public street, during a feast-day and full promenade. — But to return to things more analogous to the 'Literary Character:'

XV111 PREFACE.

I wish to say, that had I known that the book was to fall into your hands, or that the MS. notes you have thought worthy of publication, would have attracted your attention, I would have made them more copious, and perhaps not so careless.

" I really cannot know whether I am, or am not, the genius you are pleased to call me, — but I am very willing to put up with the mistake, if it be one. It is a title dearly enough bought by most men, to render it endurable, even when not quite clearly made out, which it never can be, till the Posterity, whose decisions are merely dreams to ourselves, have sanctioned or denied it, while it can touch us no further.

" Mr. Murray is in possession of a MS. memoir of mine (not to be published till I am in my grave), which, strange as it may seem, I never read over since it was written, and have no desire to read over again. In it, I have told what, as far as I know, is the truth — not the whole truth — for if I had done so, I must have involved much private, and some dissipated history ; but, nevertheless, nothing but truth, as far as regard for others permitted it to appear.

" I do not kuow whether you have seen those MSS. ; but, as you are curious in such things as relate to the human mind, I should feel gratified if you had. I also sent him (Murray), a few days since, a Common-place Book, by my friend Lord Clare, containing

PREFACE. XIX a few tilings, which may perhaps aid his publication in case of his surviving me. If there are any questions which you would like to ask me, as connected with your philosophy' of the literary mind (if mine be a literary mind), I will answer them fairly, or give a reason for not, good — bad — or indifferent. At present, I am paying the penalty of having helped to spoil the public taste ; for, as long as I wrote in the false exaggerated style of youth and the times in which we live, they applauded me to the very echo ; and within these few years, when I have endeavoured at better things, and written what I suspect to have the principle of duration in it : the Church, the Chancellor, and all men, even to my grand patron, Francis Jeffrey, Esq., of the Edinburgh Review, have risen up against me, and my later publications. Such is Truth ! men dare not look her in the face, except by degrees ; they mistake her for a Gorgon, instead of knowing her to be Minerva. I do not mean to apply this mythological simile to my own endeavours, but I have only to turn over a few pages of your volumes, to find innumerable and far more illustrious instances. It is lucky that I am of a temper not to be easily turned aside, though by no means difficult to irritate. But I am making a dissertation, instead of writing a letter. I write to you from the Yilla Dujmy, near Leghorn, with the islands of Elba and Corsica visible from my

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balcony, and my old friend the Mediterranean rolling blue at my feet. As long as I retain my feeling and my passion for Nature, I can partly soften or subdue my other passions, and resist or endure those of others.

" I have the honour to be, truly, your obliged and faithful servant,

" Noel Byron.

" To I. D'Israeli, Esq."

The ill-starred expedition to Greece followed this

Letter.

This work, conceived in youth, executed by the research of manhood, and associated with the noblest feelings of our nature, is an humble but fervent tribute, offered to the memory of those Master Spirits from w T hose labours, as Burke eloquently describes, " their country receives permanent service. Those who know how to make the silence of their closets more beneficial to the world than all the noise and bustle of courts, senates, and camps."

LITERARY CHARACTER.

Chapter I

Of Literary Characters, and of the Lovers of Literature and Art.

Diffused over enlightened Europe, an order of men has arisen, who, uninfluenced by the interests or the passions which give an impulse to the other classes of society, are connected by the secret links of congenial pursuits, and, insensibly to themselves, are combining in the same common labours, and participating in the same divided glory. In the metropolitan cities of Europe the same authors are now read, and the same opinions become established : the Englishman is familiar with Machiavel and Montesquieu ; the Italian and the Frenchman with Bacon and Locke ; and the same smiles and tears are awakened on the banks of the Thames, of the Seine, or of the Guadalquivir, by Shakespeare, Moliere, and Cervantes.

Contemporains de tous les hommes, Et citoyens de tous les lieux.

A khan of Tartary admired the wit of Moliere, and discovered the Tartuffe in the Crimea ; and had this

2 THE LITERARY CHARACTER.

ingenious sovereign survived the translation which he ordered, the immortal labour of the comic satirist of France might have laid the foundations of good taste even among the Turks and the Tartars. We see the Italian Pignotti referring to the opinion of an English critic, Lord Bolingbroke, for decisive authority on the peculiar characteristics of the historian Gmcciardini : t\e German Schlegel writes on our Shakespeare like a patriot ; and while the Italians admire the noble scenes which our Flaxman has drawn from their great Poet, they have rejected the feeble attempts of their native artists. Such is the wide and the perpetual influence of this living intercourse of literary minds.

Scarcely have two centuries elapsed since the literature of every nation was limited to its father-land, and men of genius long could only hope for the spread of their fame in the single language of ancient Rome; which for them had ceased to be natural, and could never be popular. It was in the intercourse of the wealth, the Lwer, and the novel arts of the nations of Europe, that they learnt each other's languages ; and they discovered, that however their manners varied as they arose from their different customs, they participated in the same intellectual faculties, suffered from the same wants, and were alive to the same pleasures ; they perceived that there were no conventional fashions, nor national distinctions, in abstract truths and fundamental knowledge. A new spirit seems to bring them nearer to each other ; and as if literary Europe were intent to form but one people out of the populace of mankind they offer their reciprocal labours ; they pledge to each

THE LITERARY CHARACTER. 3

other the same opinions; and that knowledge which, like a small river, takes its source from one spot, at length mingles with the ocean-stream common to them all.

But those who stand connected with this literary community are not always sensible of the kindred alliance ; even a genius of the first order has not always been aware that he is the founder of a society, and that there will ever be a brotherhood where there is a father-genius.

These literary characters are partially, and with a melancholy colouring, exhibited by Johnson. " To talk in private, to think in solitude, to inquire or to answer inquiries, is the business of a scholar. He wanders about the world without pomp or terror ; and is neither known nor valued but by men like himself." Thus thought this great writer during those sad probationary years of genius, when

" Slow rises worth, by poverty depress' d ;"

not yet conscious that he himself was devoting his days to cast the minds of his contemporaries and of the succeeding age in the mighty mould of his own ; for Johnson was of that order of men whose individual genius becomes that of a people. A prouder conception rose in the majestic mind of Milton, of " that lasting fame and perpetuity of praise which God and good men have consented shall be the reward of those whose published labours advance the good of mankind."

The literary character is a denomination which,

however vague, defines the pursuits of the individual,

and separates him from other professions, although it

frequently occurs that he is himself a member of one.

b 2

4 LOVERS OF LITERATURE AND ART.

Professional characters are modified by the change of manners, and are usually national ; while the literary character, from the objects in which it concerns itsell, retains a more permanent, and necessarily a more independent nature.

Formed by the same habits, and influenced by the same motives, notwithstanding the contrast of talents and tempers, and the remoteness of times and places, the literary character has ever preserved among its followers the most striking family-resemblance. The passion for study, the delight in books, the desire of solitude and celebrity, the obstructions of human Me, the character of their pursuits, the uniformity of their habits, the triumphs and the disappointments of literary glory, were as truly described by Cicero and the youncrer Pliny as by Petrarch and Erasmus, and as they have been by Hume and Gibbon. And this similarity too may equally be remarked with respect to that noble passion of the lovers of literature and of art for collecting together their mingled treasures ; a thirst which was as insatiable in Atticus and Peiresc as in our Cracherode and Townley. We trace the feelings of our literary contemporaries in all ages, and among every people who have ranked with nations far advanced in civilization ; for among these may be equally observed both the great artificers of knowledge, and those who preserve unbroken the vast chain of human acquisitions. The one have stamped the images of their minds on their works, and the others have preserved the circulation of this intellectual coinage, this

; Gold of the dead,

Which Time does still disperse, hut not devour.

MATTER-OF-FACT MEN.

Chapter II

Of the Adversaries of Literary Men among themselves. — Matter-offact Men, and Men of Wit. — The Political Economists. — Of those

who abandon their studies Men in office. — The arbiters of public

opinion. — Those who treat the pursuits of literature with levity.

The pursuits of literature have been openly or insidiously lowered by those literary men who, from motives not always difficult to penetrate, are eager to confound the ranks in the republic of letters, maliciously conferring the honours of authorship on that " Ten Thousand" whose recent list is not so much a muster-roll of heroes, as a table of population.*

Matter-of-fact men, or men of knowledge, and men of wit and taste, were long inimical to each other's pursuits. t The Royal Society in its origin could

* We have a Dictionary of "Ten Thousand living Authors" of our own nation. The alphabet is fatal by its juxta-positions. In France, before the Revolution, they counted about twenty thousand writers. When David would have his people numbered, Joab asked, "why doth my lord delight in this?" In political economy, the population returns may be useful, provided they be correct ; but in the literary republic, its numerical force diminishes the strength of the empire. " There you are numbered, we had rather you were weighed." Put aside the puling infants of literature, of whom such a mortality occurs in its nurseries ; such as the writers of the single sermon, the single law-tract, the single medical dissertation, &c. ; all writers whose subject is single, without being singular ; count for nothing the inefficient mob of mediocrists ; and strike out our literary charlatans ; and then our alphabet of men of genius will not consist, as it now does, of the four-and-twenty letters.