Part 6 (1/2)

While these pages are preparing for the press, Dr. Moshlech, a scientist, and the master of ten languages, has died in the county almshouse of Erie, Pennsylvania. He was a Prussian by birth, and graduated with high honors from the University of Bonn; made medicine a specialty, and practised the profession for several years in Paris, but finally turned his attention to science, and afterwards to the languages. He numbered among his friends many ill.u.s.trious men, chief of whom were Darwin and Victor Hugo. At the beginning of our late war he visited this country, and accepted a position as Professor of Greek and Hebrew in Bethany College, West Virginia, which he held but a short time, owing to the war excitement. He subsequently practised medicine in Ohio and Pennsylvania, and wrote for scientific publications. He was so much interested in his work that he neglected to make provision for his old age; and when he could no longer pursue his profession, this man, who had a.s.sociated with the most learned men of Europe, was compelled to apply to a poorhouse for shelter and bread. Even after he entered the almshouse he prepared a number of young men for college, and lectured occasionally before the Erie Historical Society.

Few authors are so calm of spirit, or so a.s.sured of their position, as not to shrink from well-expressed criticism, and especially when it comes in the form of ridicule,--forgetting that although an a.s.s may bray at a cla.s.sic statue, an a.s.s cannot create one.[130] So sensitive was even Newton to critical attacks, that Whiston, another English philosopher, and a personal friend of Sir Isaac, said he was quite unmanned when any declaration of his was called in question by the reviewers; and further, that he (Whiston) lost Newton's favor, which he had enjoyed for twenty years, by contradicting him on some point of his printed works; ”for,” he adds, ”no man was of a more fearful temper.”

Some critics use the pen as the surgeon does the scalpel: they do not a.n.a.lyze, but they dissect. The flowers of the imagination, like the life of the body, vanish if too closely pressed. ”Criticism,” says Richter, ”often takes from the tree caterpillar and blossoms together.”[131] Thus was the heart of poor Keats crushed and broken by the malignant severity of Gifford in the ”Quarterly Review.” One would have thought that this captious critic, who by his own talent alone had worked his way from the cobbler's bench to the editorial chair of the ”Quarterly,” would have been more considerate towards a man[132] who, like himself, rose from humble a.s.sociations. It only proved that the man who had successfully cast the slough of vulgar life, had still the heart of a clown. Gifford was indignant and sensitive beyond measure at a published criticism on his translation of Juvenal, which appeared in the ”Critical Review;” and he put forth a sharp, angry answer, in the form of a large quarto pamphlet. No poet ever exhibited a more vivid perception of the beautiful, or greater powers of fancy, than Keats; but the bitterness of the criticism referred to was too much for his delicate health and sensitive nature, hastening, if it did not actually develop, the seeds of consumption, of which he died. Keats's father was a livery-stable keeper, and it is said that the future poet was born in the most humble quarters; but the irresistible fire of genius lighted his path, and had he lived past the noon of life, he would have carved his way to the highest fame. He finally went to Rome, in the hope of recuperating his failing health; but that was not to be. In the last day of his illness a companion who had called in, asked him how he was. ”Better, my friend,”

he answered in a low voice. ”I feel the daisies growing over me!” He died at Rome in his twenty-sixth year, Feb. 23, 1821. His body lies in the English burial-ground outside the gates of the ancient city, by the Appian Way, and near to the pyramid of Cestius. The simple slab that marks the spot interests one quite as much as many of the grand historical monuments of the Via Appia.[133] We all remember the touching epitaph from his own pen:--

”Here lies one whose name was writ in water.”

As to the effect of criticism in general, we are told that Pope was observed to writhe in his chair on hearing the letter of Cibber mentioned, with other severe criticism on the product of his hand and brain. The strictures, deserved and undeserved, which were publicly made on Montesquieu are said to have hastened his death. Ritson's extreme sensitiveness to criticism ended in lunacy, and Racine is thought by many to have died from the same cause.

Surely disappointment tracks the path of genius. Thus Collins, the eminent lyric poet, whose ”Ode to the Pa.s.sions” has made his name famous and familiar in our day, did not live to enjoy his literary success; indeed, his death is known to have been hastened by long neglect. The last half of his brief life was darkened by melancholy,[134] and his home was a lunatic asylum. The money received from his publishers as copyright on his poems he voluntarily refunded, also paying the entire expense of the edition, after which he made a bonfire of the sheets. As we have seen in so many other instances, it was left for posterity to do Collins justice. In the course of a single generation, without any advent.i.tious aid to bring them into notice, his poems have come to rank among the best of their kind in the language. Poor Collins! unfortunate in love, threatened with blindness, and hara.s.sed by bailiffs half his life, his career was one of unrest, unhappiness, and despair; death, the comforter of him whom time cannot console, gave the poet an early grave.[135]

Small was the portion of happiness that fell to the share of these men of genius; the lonely places they occupied were too lofty for companions.h.i.+p. ”The wild summits of the mountains are inaccessible,”

says Madame Necker; ”only eagles and reptiles can get there.” We have seen how hard appears the fate of genius as a rule, and that its possession is often at the cost of great deprivation and unhappiness. Is it not difficult to recall an instance where a p.r.o.nounced genius has also enjoyed the quiet beauty of domestic life? Wordsworth's remark, however, is applicable: namely, that men do not make their homes unhappy because they have genius, but because they have not enough genius. The conclusion would seem to be that we may envy talent, but must oftenest pity genius.

About half a century since, the well-known indiscretions of Sh.e.l.ley caused his name to be tabooed in London society, though in moral attributes he stood immeasurably above his friend Byron. Still, he was amenable enough to censure. His poetry is strikingly brilliant; each line is a complete thought, and the whole sparkles like sunlight upon the sea. After being expelled from college he made a ”Gretna Green”

marriage with Harriet Westbrook, but eventually abandoned her with his two children,--the woman who had given up all for him, and who in her dark hour of sorrow and despair drowned herself.[136] We can describe Sh.e.l.ley's character no better than by comparing it to his longest poem, the ”Revolt of Islam,” which abounds in pa.s.sages of surpa.s.sing beauty, but which as a whole is deficient in connection and human interest. It is as erratic as his own life.[137] There is so much of bad in the best, and of good in the worst, that few of us are willing to sit in judgment upon poor humanity. Time has softened the asperity of our feelings, and the productions of Sh.e.l.ley's genius are now justly admired. When, after his fatal accident, his body was washed on sh.o.r.e, a copy of Keats's poems was found in his pocket. His ashes now rest near those of his brother poet outside the gates of Rome. As a striking example of his remarkable sensibility, we may mention the effect upon him when he first listened to the reading of Coleridge's ”Christabel”[138] in a small social circle. Says one who was present, ”Sh.e.l.ley was so affected that he fainted dead away.” He was consistent, and lived up to his convictions. While listening to the organ in an Italian cathedral, he sighed that charity instead of faith was not regarded as the substance of religion. The maintenance of his opinion cost him a fine estate, so constant and profuse were his charities towards impoverished men of letters and the poor generally.

The author of an ”Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard”[139] was absolutely a slave to diffidence and painful shyness,--a characteristic which led to bitter persecution while he was a young student; nor could he ever quite divest himself of this nervous timidity. Hazlitt says of Gray that ”he was terrified out of his wits at the bare idea of having his portrait prefixed to his works, and probably died from nervous agitation at the publicity into which his name had been forced by his learning, taste, and genius.” On the death of Cibber, the vacant laureates.h.i.+p was offered to Gray, but his sensitiveness led him to decline it.[140]

CHAPTER VII.

In these desultory chapters we have more than once seen that fame appeals to posterity; but in the instance of Byron it was contemporary, for he tells us he ”awoke one morning and found himself famous.” No man's errors were ever more closely observed and recorded than his; and we are still too near the period of his life to forget his foibles and remember only the productions of his genius. Byron, like Pope, was a sufferer from physical deformity, and much of the morbid sensibility of both arose from their common misfortune. Macaulay, speaking of Byron, says: ”He had naturally a generous and feeling heart, but his temper was wayward and irritable. He had a head which statuaries loved to copy, and a foot the deformity of which the beggar in the street mimicked.

Distinguished at once by the strength and by the weakness of his intellect, affectionate yet perverse, a poor lord and a handsome cripple, he required, if ever man required, the finest and most judicious training. But capriciously as Nature had dealt with him, the parent to whom the office of forming his character was intrusted was more capricious still. She pa.s.sed from paroxysms of rage to paroxysms of tenderness. At one time she stiffled him with her caresses; at another time she insulted his deformity. He came into the world; and the world treated him as his mother had treated him,--sometimes with fondness, sometimes with cruelty, never with justice. It indulged him without discrimination, and punished him without discrimination. He was truly a spoiled child,--the spoiled child of fortune, the spoiled child of fame, the spoiled child of society.” The author of ”Don Juan” was actuated at times by a strange recklessness, and a desire to seem worse than he really was. He aped the misanthrope, a.s.sumed unfelt remorse, and affected singularity, in order to court notoriety. However capricious may have been his temper, he came rightly enough by it, since his mother was noted for the frenzied violence of her pa.s.sion, being wholly without judgment or self-control, and in nearly every respect disqualified for performing a parent's duty.[141] Byron was also a victim of hypochondria only in a less degree than Johnson and Cowley; and this is his one genuine excuse for the excesses into which he sometimes rushed headlong.

No matter in what light we consider him, all must concede the fervor of his pa.s.sionate genius; and therein lay his remarkable power, for man is at his greatest when stimulated by the pa.s.sions. Enthusiasm is contagious, and infuses a spirit of emulation; while reason, calm and forcible, only wins us by the slow process of conviction.

The truest grandeur of our nature is often born of sorrow. Those who have suffered most have developed the profoundest sympathies and have sung for us the sweetest notes. It is the heart which is seamed with scars that compels other hearts. Charles Lamb, at one time himself confined in an insane asylum, lived to the end of his days with, and in charge of, an unfortunate sister, who in a fit of madness murdered her mother,--an experience sufficient to cast, as it did, an awful blight over his whole life; but it was the occasion in him of an instance of holy human love and pure self-denial seldom equalled. Poor Mary Lamb[142] knew when these mental attacks were coming on, and then her brother and herself, hand in hand, sought the asylum, to the matron of which he would say, ”I have brought Mary again;” and presently, when the attack had pa.s.sed, he was at the door of the asylum to receive her once more and take her kindly home. The domestic tragedy and his sister's condition caused Lamb to give up all idea of marriage, though at the time of the sad occurrence he was sincerely attached to a lovely woman. The court, after Mary's trial, consigned her to her brother's care. He wrote to his friend Coleridge, ”I am wedded to the fortunes of my sister and my poor old father.” The father died not long subsequent, but Mary survived Charles thirteen years, dying in 1847. With considerable ability as a versifier, Lamb will not be remembered as a poet; his fame will rest on his essays and his sagacious criticisms. The ”Essays of Elia” are inimitable, full of the author's personality, exquisitely delicate, poetical, whimsical, witty, and odd. The only fault to be reasonably found with them is their brevity. We wish there were a dozen volumes in place of one. They are the pedestal upon which the fame of this gentle, charitable, and quaint genius will ever rest.

Lamb's character was amiably eccentric, but always full of loving-kindness. The pseudonym of ”Elia” has become famous, and was first a.s.sumed in the author's contributions to the ”London Magazine.”

While his lovable disposition and pensive cast of thought tinge all his productions, there is ever a playfulness lurking just below the surface which is sure to captivate the most casual reader. During his life Lamb was looked upon by the world as possessing more oddity than genius; but now all join in admitting him to be one of the fixed stars of literature.[143] What a significant fact it is that Lamb was so tenderly regarded by the galaxy of notable men with whom he a.s.sociated! He was a schoolmate of Coleridge and intimate with him for fifty years. Southey, Hazlitt, Wordsworth, G.o.dwin, De Quincey, Edward Irving, Thomas Hood, Leigh Hunt, and other men of literary fame were the warm and loving friends of Charles Lamb.

With all his aesthetic proclivities, ”Elia” was of a sensuous nature.

Besides roast pig, he had other favored dishes, not rare and luxurious, but special, nevertheless. He was particularly fond of brawn, and considered tripe to be superlatively appetizing when suitably prepared.

He was also a connoisseur in all sorts of drinks; not that he was extravagant,--on the contrary, he was to a degree self-denying, and even with all his little generosities and his care of his sister Mary he managed to leave two thousand pounds, saved out of his always moderate income, to make that sister comfortable. He wrote to Wordsworth: ”G.o.d help me! I am a Christian, an Englishman, a Londoner, a Templar. When I put off these snug relations and go to the world to come, I shall be like a crow on the sand.” Lamb said that oftentimes absurd images forced themselves with irresistible power upon his mind,--such, for instance, as an elephant in a coach office gravely waiting to have his trunk booked; or a mermaid over a fish-kettle cooking her own tail![144]

Wordsworth--to whom we have already alluded more than once--was at times distressingly poor, and in such straitened circ.u.mstances that he and his family denied themselves meat for days together. Had it not been for the admirable influence of his sister Dorothy, who cheered his spirits and counteracted his morbid tendencies, his mind might have drifted into something like insanity. His disappointment was great at the comparative failure of his literary work, which brought him little in the way of pecuniary return during his life. A fortunate legacy and comparatively sinecure office, however, finally afforded him humble independence.

It seems gratuitous to refer to the natural weakness of so pure and good a man as Wordsworth, but we have tried to be impartial in these pages. Grand and simple as our poet was, he had the element of vanity snugly stowed away among his attributes, yet ready to betray itself on occasion. It is related that sometimes when he met a little child he would stop and ask him to observe his face carefully, so that in after years the child might be able to say he had seen the great Wordsworth.

”Wordsworth,” says Charles Lamb, ”one day told me that he considered Shakespeare greatly overrated. 'There is,' said he, 'an immensity of trick in all Shakespeare wrote, and people are taken by it. Now, if I had a mind, I could write exactly like Shakespeare!' So you see,” added Lamb, ”it was only the mind that was wanting!” The late James T. Fields, who was a hearty admirer and personal friend of the poet, said, ”Yes, Wordsworth was vain; but think for a moment what he has produced, and how much he had in him to be self-conscious of!”

Colton, better known by his _nom de plume_ of ”Lacon,” is a vivid ill.u.s.tration of the eccentricities of genius. Though he was a man whose personal character is entirely unworthy of our respect, yet no one can deny that he was endowed with marked and original powers. He comes before us in our day simply as the author of his remarkable Laconics, full of spontaneous thoughts happily expressed, and which will compare favorably with the apothegms of Bacon or the terse brevities of Rochefoucauld. The eccentricities and irregularities of Colton are almost too extravagant for belief, and certainly will not bear rehearsal. At one and the same time a clergyman of fair repute and the secret companion of sporting-men and gamblers, he was always playing a double part. He was the author of several important pamphlets and some excellent poetry, and, when abroad, the well-paid correspondent of the London press. Notwithstanding the wit and consummate wisdom of the volume which made him famous, it must be admitted that he was incapable of appreciating what was grand and n.o.ble in principle. Deeply in debt, he fled to Paris to escape the importunities of his creditors, where he became a confirmed and undisguised gambler. Here at one time he realized such an extraordinary run of luck as to break a famous bank, becoming the possessor of nearly thirty thousand pounds. His experience was like that of nearly every one who becomes suddenly rich in a similar manner.

He lost every penny of his winnings within a few weeks, and retired to Fontainebleau, where he ended his life by suicide.[145] In future generations, when his personal career is forgotten, his one remarkable literary monument will still remain, like the column of Luxor, imperishable.

It is known to every mathematician that the regular gambler must lose in the end, even though he may ”break the bank” now and then. Even if the bank is honestly conducted, all the chances are against him. The theory of probabilities has become almost an exact science. Arago,--the famous French astronomer and natural philosopher,--when consulted by a gentleman who was infatuated with the terrible vice of gambling, told him, within a few francs, how much he had lost the preceding year. ”But I must play,” was the answer. ”It is true that I find my fortune diminis.h.i.+ng every year, as you have stated; but can you not tell me how, on a capital of five million francs, I may save enough to give me a decent burial in the end?” Arago, after learning the gambler's method of playing, and the sum he risked, told him that he must reduce the amount of his daily ventures to a certain small number of francs, and that, according to the law of chances, however cool and calm his playing, he would lose his five million francs in about fifteen years. Every body of stockholders in a faro bank can calculate on twenty per cent of their investment being returned to them yearly.

Could genius enjoy the advantage of being judged by its peers, it would stand a better chance for contemporary fame; but overshadowed, as it so often is, by foibles, waywardness, and those pa.s.sions alike common to the humble and the exalted, it must pa.s.s through the crucible of time to fit it for sincere homage. Robert Burns, whose struggle with fate began almost beside the cradle, and whose youth was one ceaseless buffeting with misfortune, is an ill.u.s.tration in point. His productions are not of a character to set aside altogether the remembrance of his follies, though we are all inclined to treat the memory of the Scottish bard with indulgence and half reverence, while we hasten to acknowledge his great and unquestioned genius. Burns was sadly addicted to whiskey and tobacco, which led Byron, as we have already said, to call him ”a strange compound of dirt and deity.” The author of ”Childe Harold”

forgot the proverb about those who live in gla.s.s houses. Burns, from early youth, was subject to extraordinary fits of dejection, which amounted to a species of hypochondria, long before convivial society had inoculated him with the then popular vice of intemperance. He became finally an incongruous mixture of mirth and melancholy, while poverty with its attendant ills was seldom from his door. He writes to a friend: ”I have been for some time pining under secret wretchedness; the pang of disappointment, the sting of pride, and some wandering stabs of remorse settle on my vitals like vultures when my attention is not called away by the claims of society or the vagaries of the Muse.” Poor, ill-fated genius![146] By his follies and indulgences he as surely committed suicide in his thirty-seventh year as did the starving, half-delirious Chatterton on his bed of straw.

Mrs. Dunlop, an early patroness of Burns, had in her family an old and favored housekeeper, who did not exactly relish her mistress's attention to a man of such low estate. In order to overcome her prejudice, her mistress induced the domestic to read one of Burns's poems, the ”Cotter's Sat.u.r.day Night.” When Mrs. Dunlop inquired her opinion of the poem, the housekeeper replied with quaint indifference, ”Aweel, madam, that's vera weel.” ”Is that all you have to say in its favor?” asked the mistress. ”'Deed, madam,” she replied, ”the like o' you quality may see a vast in 't; but I was aye used the like o' all that the poet has written about in my ain father's house, and atweel I dinna ken how he could hae described it any other gate.” When Burns heard of the old woman's criticism, he remarked that it was one of the highest compliments he had ever received.

The name of Th.o.r.eau suggests itself in this connection. He lived in a cabin erected by himself on the borders of Walden Pond, a voluntary hermit, frugal and self-denying, that he might enjoy a studious retirement. The intimate friend of Emerson and Hawthorne must have had fine original qualities to commend him. Known at the outset only as an oddity, he grew finally to be respected and admired for his quaint genius. He experienced a disappointment in love, which doubtless had much to do with his social peculiarities.[147] In business and the affairs of every-day life he was utterly impracticable. He supported himself during his college course at Cambridge by teaching school, doing carpentering, and other work. The restrictions of society were intolerable to him; he never attended church, never paid a tax, and never voted. He ate no flesh, drank no wine, never used tobacco, and though a naturalist, used neither trap nor gun. When asked at dinner what dish he preferred, he answered, ”The nearest.” ”So many negative superiorities smack somewhat of the prig,” says one of his reviewers.