Part 16 (2/2)
[Footnote A: These interesting letters are preserved in Count Baldelli's ”Life of Boccaccio,” p. 115.]
The unity of feeling is displayed in such memorable a.s.sociates as BEAUMONT and FLETCHER; whose labours are so combined, that no critic can detect the mingled production of either; and whose lives are so closely united, that no biographer can compose the memoirs of the one without running into the history of the other. Their days were interwoven as their verses.
MONTAIGNE and CHARRON, in the eyes of posterity, are rivals; but such literary friends.h.i.+p knows no rivalry. Such was Montaigne's affection for Charron, that he requested him by his will to bear the arms of the Montaignes; and Charrot evinced his grat.i.tude to the manes of his departed friend, by leaving his fortune to the sister of Montaigne.
How pathetically ERASMUS mourns over the death of his beloved Sir THOMAS MORE!--”_In Moro mihi videor extinctus”_--”I seem to see myself extinct in More.” It was a melancholy presage of his own death, which shortly after followed. The Doric sweetness and simplicity of old ISAAC WALTON, the angler, were reflected in a mind as clear and generous, when CHARLES COTTON continued the feelings, rather than the little work of Walton.
METASTASIO and FARINELLI called each other _il Gemello_, the Twin: and both delighted to trace the resemblance of their lives and fates, and the perpetual alliance of the verse and the voice. The famous JOHN BAPTISTA PORTA had a love of the mysterious parts of sciences, such as physiognomy, natural magic, the cryptical arts of writing, and projected many curious inventions which astonished his age, and which we have carried to perfection. This extraordinary man saw his fame somewhat diminis.h.i.+ng by a rumour that his brother John Vincent had a great share in the composition of his works; but this never disturbed him; and Peiresc, in an interesting account of a visit to this celebrated Neapolitan, observed, that though now aged and grey-haired, he treated his younger brother as a son. These single-hearted brothers, who would not marry that they might never be separated, knew of but one fame, and that was the fame of Porta.
GOGUET, the author of ”The Origin of the Arts and Sciences,” bequeathed his MSS. and his books to his friend Fugere, with whom he had long united his affections and his studies, that his surviving friend might proceed with them: but the author had died of a slow and painful disorder, which Fugere had watched by his side, in silent despair. The sight of those MSS.
and books was the friend's death-stroke; half his soul, which had once given them animation, was parted from him, and a few weeks terminated his own days. When LLOYD heard of the death of CHURCHILL, he neither wished to survive him, nor did[A]. The Abbe de St. Pierre gave an interesting proof of literary friends.h.i.+p for Varignon, the geometrician. They were of congenial dispositions, and St. Pierre, when he went to Paris, could not endure to part with Varignon, who was too poor to accompany him; and St.
Pierre was not rich. A certain income, however moderate, was necessary for the tranquil pursuits of geometry. St. Pierre presented Varignon with a portion of his small income, accompanied by that delicacy of feeling which men of genius who know each other can best conceive: ”I do not give it you,” said St. Pierre, ”as a salary but as an annuity, that you may be independent, and quit me when you dislike me.” The same circ.u.mstance occurred between AKENSIDE and DYSON. Dyson, when the poet was in great danger of adding one more ill.u.s.trious name to the ”Calamities of Authors,”
interposed between him and ill-fortune, by allowing him an annuity of three hundred a-year; and, when he found the fame of his literary friend attacked, although not in the habit of composition, he published a defence of his poetical and philosophical character. The name and character of Dyson have been suffered to die away, without a single tribute of even biographical sympathy; as that of LONGUEVILLE, the modest patron of BUTLER, in whom that great political satirist found what the careless ingrat.i.tude of a court had denied: but in the record of literary glory, the patron's name should be inscribed by the side of the literary character: for the public incurs an obligation whenever a man of genius is protected.
[Footnote A: This event is thus told by Southey: ”The news of Churchill's death was somewhat abruptly announced to Lloyd as he sat at dinner; he was seized with a sudden sickness, and saying, 'I shall follow poor Charles,'
took to his bed, from which he never rose again; dying, if ever man died, of a broken heart. The tragedy did not end here: Churchill's favourite sister, who is said to have possessed much of her brother's sense, and spirit, and genius, and to have been betrothed to Lloyd, attended him during his illness, and, sinking under the double loss, soon followed her brother and her lover to the grave.”--ED.]
The statesman Fouquet, deserted by all others, witnessed LA FONTAINE hastening every literary man to his prison-gate. Many have inscribed their works to their disgraced patrons, as POPE did so n.o.bly to the Earl of Oxford in the Tower:
When interest calls off all her sneaking train, And all the obliged desert, and all the vain, They wait, or to the scaffold, or the cell, When the last lingering friend has bid farewell.
Literary friends.h.i.+p is a sympathy not of manners, but of feelings. The personal character may happen to be very opposite: the vivacious may be loved by the melancholic, and the wit by the man of learning. He who is vehement and vigorous will feel himself a double man by the side of the friend who is calm and subtle. When we observe such friends.h.i.+ps, we are apt to imagine that they are not real because the characters are dissimilar; but it is their common tastes and pursuits which form a bond of union. POMPONIUS LAETUS, so called from his natural good-humour, was the personal friend of HERMOLATTS BARBABUS, whose saturnine and melancholy disposition he often exhilarated; the warm, impetuous LUTHER, was the beloved friend of the mild and amiable MELANCTHON; the caustic BOILEAU was the companion of RACINE and MOLIERE; and France, perhaps, owes the _chefs-d'oeuvre_ of her tragic and her comic poet to her satirist. The delicate taste and the refining ingenuity of HURD only attached him the more to the impetuous and dogmatic WARBURTON[A]. No men could be more opposite in personal character than the careless, gay, and hasty STEELE, and the cautious, serious, and the elegant ADDISON; yet no literary friends.h.i.+p was more fortunate than their union.
[Footnote A: For a full account of their literary career see the first article in ”Quarrels of Authors.”]
One glory is reserved for literary friends.h.i.+p. The friends.h.i.+p of a great name indicates the greatness of the character who appeals to it. When SYDENHAM mentioned, as a proof of the excellence of his method of treating acute diseases, that it had received the approbation of his ill.u.s.trious friend LOCKE, the philosopher's opinion contributed to the physician's success.
Such have been the friends.h.i.+ps of great literary characters; but too true it is, that they have not always contributed thus largely to their mutual happiness. The querulous lament of GLEIM to KLOPSTOCK is too generally partic.i.p.ated. As Gleim lay on his death-bed he addressed the great bard of Germany--”I am dying, dear Klopstock; and, as a dying man will I say, in this world we have not lived long enough together and for each other; but in vain would we now recal the past!” What tenderness in the reproach!
What self-accusation in its modesty!
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.
Are the personal dispositions of an author discoverable in his writings, as those of an artist are imagined to appear in his works, where Michael Angelo is always great, and Raphael ever graceful?
Is the moralist a moral man? Is he malignant who publishes caustic satires? Is he a libertine who composes loose poems? And is he, whose imagination delights in terror and in blood, the very monster he paints?
Many licentious writers have led chaste lives. LA MOTHE LE VAYER wrote two works of a free nature; yet his was the unblemished life of a retired sage. BAYLE is the too faithful compiler of impurities, but he resisted the voluptuousness of the senses as much as Newton. LA FONTAINE wrote tales fertile in intrigue, yet the ”bon-homme” has not left on record a single ingenious amour of his own. The Queen of NAVARRE'S Tales are gross imitations of Boccaccio's; but she herself was a princess of irreproachable habits, and had given proof of the most rigid virtue; but stories of intrigues, told in a natural style, formed the fas.h.i.+onable literature of the day, and the genius of the female writer was amused in becoming an historian without being an actor. FORTIGUERRA, the author of the Ricciardetto, abounds with loose and licentious descriptions, and yet neither his manners nor his personal character were stained by the offending freedom of his inventions. SMOLLETT'S character is immaculate; yet he has described two scenes which offend even in the license of imagination. COWLEY, who boasts with such gaiety of the versatility of his pa.s.sion among so many mistresses, wanted even the confidence to address one. Thus, licentious writers may be very chaste persons. The imagination may be a volcano while the heart is an Alp of ice.
Turn to the moralist--there we find Seneca, a usurer of seven millions, writing on moderate desires on a table of gold. SALl.u.s.t, who so eloquently declaims against the licentiousness of the age, was repeatedly accused in the senate of public and habitual debaucheries; and when this inveigher against the spoilers of provinces attained to a remote government, he pillaged like Verres. That ”DEMOSTHENES was more capable of recommending than of imitating the virtues of our ancestors,” is the observation of Plutarch. LUCIAN, when young, declaimed against the friends.h.i.+p of the great, as another name for servitude; but when his talents procured him a situation under the emperor, he facetiously compared himself to those quacks who, themselves plagued by a perpetual cough, offer to sell an infallible remedy for one. Sir THOMAS MORE, in his ”Utopia,” declares that no man ought to be punished for his religion; yet he became a fierce persecutor, flogging and racking men for his own ”true faith.” At the moment the poet ROUSSEAU was giving versions of the Psalms, full of unction, as our Catholic neighbours express it, he was profaning the same pen with infamous epigrams; and an erotic poet of our times has composed night-hymns in churchyards with the same ardour with which he poured forth Anacreontics. Napoleon said of Bernardin St. Pierre, whose writings breathe the warm principles of humanity and social happiness in every page, that he was one of the worst private characters in France. I have heard this from other quarters; it startles one! The pathetic genius of STERNE played about his head, but never reached his heart[A]. Cardinal RICHELIEU wrote ”The Perfection of a Christian, or the Life of a Christian;” yet was he an utter stranger to Gospel maxims; and FREDERICK THE GREAT, when young, published his ”Anti-Machiavel,” and deceived the world by the promise of a pacific reign. This military genius protested against those political arts which, he afterwards adroitly practised, uniting the lion's head with the fox's tail--and thus himself realising the political monster of Machiavel!
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