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Literary Character of Men of Genius by Isaac Disraeli

I >> Isaac Disraeli >> Literary Character of Men of Genius




[Footnote A: For some account of this place, see the chapter on "Literary
Residences" in vol. iii. p. 395, of "Curiosities of Literature."]

[Footnote B: These facts are drawn from a manuscript of the late Sir
Herbert Croft, who regretted that Dr. Johnson would not suffer him to give
this account during the doctor's lifetime, in his Life of Young, but which
it had always been his intention to have added to it.]

But men of genius have often been accused of imaginary crimes. Their very
eminence attracts the lie of calumny, which tradition often conveys beyond
the possibility of refutation. Sometimes they are reproached as wanting in
affection, when they displease their fathers by making an obscure name
celebrated. The family of DESCARTES lamented, as a blot in their
escutcheon, that Descartes, who was born a gentleman, should become a
philosopher; and this elevated genius was refused the satisfaction of
embracing an unforgiving parent, while his dwarfish brother, with a mind
diminutive as his person, ridiculed his philosophic relative, and turned
to advantage his philosophic disposition. The daughter of ADDISON was
educated with a perfect contempt of authors, and blushed to bear a name
more illustrious than that of all the Warwicks, on her alliance to which
noble family she prided herself. The children of MILTON, far from solacing
the age of their blind parent, became impatient for his death, embittered
his last hours with scorn and disaffection, and combined to cheat and rob
him. Milton, having enriched our national poetry by two immortal epics,
with patient grief blessed the single female who did not entirely abandon
him, and the obscure fanatic who was pleased with his poems because they
were religious. What felicities! what laurels! And now we have recently
learned, that the daughter of Madame DE SEVIGNE lived on ill terms
with her mother, of whose enchanting genius she appears to have been
insensible! The unquestionable documents are two letters hitherto
cautiously secreted. The daughter was in the house of her mother when an
extraordinary letter was addressed to her from the chamber of Madame de
Sevigne after a sleepless night. In this she describes, with her peculiar
felicity, the ill-treatment she received from the daughter she idolised;
it is a kindling effusion of maternal reproach, and tenderness, and
genius.[A]

[Footnote A: Lettres inedites de Madame de Sevigne, pp. 201 and 203.]

Some have been deemed disagreeable companions, because they felt the
weariness of dulness, or the impertinence of intrusion; described as bad
husbands, when united to women who, without a kindred feeling, had the
mean art to prey upon their infirmities; or as bad fathers, because their
offspring have not always reflected the moral beauty of their own page.
But the magnet loses nothing of its virtue, even when the particles about
it, incapable themselves of being attracted, are not acted on by its
occult property.




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.


Poverty is a state not so fatal to genius, as it is usually conceived to
be. We shall find that it has been sometimes voluntarily chosen; and that
to connect too closely great fortune with great genius, creates one of
those powerful but unhappy alliances, where the one party must necessarily
act contrary to the interests of the other.

Poverty is a relative quality, like cold and heat, which are but the
increase or the diminution in our own sensations. The positive idea must
arise from comparison. There is a state of poverty reserved even for the
wealthy man, the instant that he comes in hateful contact with the
enormous capitalist. But there is a poverty neither vulgar nor terrifying,
asking no favours and on no terms receiving any; a poverty which
annihilates its ideal evils, and, becoming even a source of pride, will
confer independence, that first step to genius.

Among the continental nations, to accumulate wealth in the spirit of a
capitalist does not seem to form the prime object of domestic life. The
traffic of money is with them left to the traffickers, their merchants,
and their financiers. In our country, the commercial character has so
closely interwoven and identified itself with the national one, and its
peculiar views have so terminated all our pursuits, that every rank is
alike influenced by its spirit, and things are valued by a market-price
which naturally admits of no such appraisement. In a country where "The
Wealth of Nations" has been fixed as the first principle of political
existence, wealth has raised an aristocracy more noble than nobility, more
celebrated than genius, more popular than patriotism; but however it may
partake at times of a generous nature, it hardly looks beyond its own
narrow pale. It is curious to notice that Montesquieu, who was in England,
observed, that "If I had been born here, nothing could have consoled me in
failing to accumulate a large fortune; but I do not lament the mediocrity
of my circumstances in France." The sources of our national wealth have
greatly multiplied, and the evil has consequently increased, since the
visit of the great philosopher.

The cares of property, the daily concerns of a family, the pressure of
such minute disturbers of their studies, have induced some great minds to
regret the abolition of those monastic orders, beneath whose undisturbed
shade were produced the mighty labours of a MONTFAUCON, a CALMET, a
FLOREZ, and the still unfinished volumes of the BENEDICTINES. Often has
the literary character, amidst the busied delights of study, sighed "to
bid a farewell sweet" to the turbulence of society. It was not discontent,
nor any undervaluing of general society, but the pure enthusiasm of the
library, which once induced the studious EVELYN to sketch a retreat of
this nature, which he addressed to his friend, the illustrious BOYLE. He
proposed to form "A college where persons of the same turn of mind might
enjoy the pleasure of agreeable society, and at the same time pass their
days without care or interruption."[A] This abandonment of their life to
their genius has, indeed, often cost them too dear, from the days of
SOPHOCLES, who, ardent in his old age, neglected his family affairs, and
was brought before his judges by his relations, as one fallen into a
second childhood. The aged poet brought but one solitary witness in his
favour--an unfinished tragedy; which having read, the judges rose before
him, and retorted the charge on his accusers.

[Footnote A: This romantic literary retreat is one of those delightful
reveries which the elegant taste of EVELYN abounded with. It may be found
at full length in the fifth volume of Boyle's Works, not in the second, as
the Biog. Brit. says. His lady was to live among the society. "If I and my
wife take up two apartments, for we are to be decently asunder, however I
stipulate, and her inclination will greatly suit with it, that shall be no
impediment to the society, but a considerable advantage to the economic
part," &c.]

A parallel circumstance occurred to the Abbe COTIN, the victim of a rhyme
of the satirical Boileau. Studious, and without fortune, Cotin had lived
contented till he incurred the unhappiness of inheriting a large estate.
Then a world of cares opened on him; his rents were not paid, and his
creditors increased. Dragged from his Hebrew and Greek, poor Cotin
resolved to make over his entire fortune to one of his heirs, on condition
of maintenance. His other relations assuming that a man who parted with
his estate in his lifetime must necessarily be deranged, brought the
learned Cotin into court. Cotin had nothing to say in his own favour, but
requested his judges would allow him to address them from the sermons
which he preached. The good sense, the sound reasoning, and the erudition
of the preacher were such, that the whole bench unanimously declared that
they themselves might be considered as madmen, were they to condemn a man
of letters who was desirous of escaping from the incumbrance of a fortune
which had only interrupted his studies.

There may then be sufficient motives to induce such a man to make a state
of mediocrity his choice. If he lose his happiness, he mutilates his
genius. GOLDONI, with all the simplicity of his feelings and habits, in
reviewing his life, tells us how he was always relapsing into his old
propensity of comic writing; "but the thought of this does not disturb
me," says he; "for though in any other situation I might have been in
easier circumstances, I should never have been so happy." BAYLE is a
parent of the modern literary character; he pursued the same course, and
early in life adopted the principle, "Neither to fear bad fortune nor have
any ardent desires for good." Acquainted with the passions only as their
historian, and living only for literature, he sacrificed to it the two
great acquisitions of human pursuits--fortune and a family: but in what
country had Bayle not a family and a possession in his fame? HUME and
GIBBON had the most perfect conception of the literary character, and they
were aware of this important principle in its habits--"My own revenue,"
said HUME, "will be sufficient for a man of letters, who surely needs less
money, both for his entertainment and credit, than other people." GIBBON
observed of himself--"Perhaps the golden mediocrity of my fortune has
contributed to fortify my application."

The state of poverty, then, desirable in the domestic life of genius, is
one in which the cares of property never intrude, and the want of wealth
is never perceived. This is not indigence; that state which, however
dignified the man of genius himself may be, must inevitably degrade! for
the heartless will gibe, and even the compassionate turn aside in
contempt. This literary outcast will soon be forsaken even by himself! his
own intellect will be clouded over, and his limbs shrink in the palsy of
bodily misery and shame--

Malesuada Fames, et turpis Egestas
Terribiles visu formae.

Not that in this history of men of genius we are without illustrious
examples of those who have even _learnt to want,_ that they might
emancipate their genius from their necessities!

We see ROUSSEAU rushing out of the palace of the financier, selling his
watch, copying music by the sheet, and by the mechanical industry of two
hours, purchasing ten for genius. We may smile at the enthusiasm of young
BARRRY, who finding himself too constant a haunter of taverns, imagined
that this expenditure of time was occasioned by having money; and to put
an end to the conflict, he threw the little he possessed at once into the
Liffey; but let us not forget that BARRY, in the maturity of life,
confidently began a labour of years,[A] and one of the noblest inventions
in his art--a great poem in a picture--with no other resource than what
he found by secret labours through the night, in furnishing the shops with
those slight and saleable sketches which secured uninterrupted mornings
for his genius. SPINOSA, a name as celebrated, and perhaps as calumniated,
as Epicurus, lived in all sorts of abstinence, even of honours, of
pensions, and of presents; which, however disguised by kindness, he would
not accept, so fearful was this philosopher of a chain! Lodging in a
cottage, and obtaining a livelihood by polishing optical glasses, he
declared he had never spent more than he earned, and certainly thought
there was such a thing as superfluous earnings. At his death, his small
accounts showed how he had subsisted on a few pence a-day, and

Enjoy'd, spare feast! a radish and an egg.

[Footnote A: His series of pictures for the walls of the meeting-room of
the Society of Arts in the Adelphi.--ED.]

POUSSIN persisted in refusing a higher price than that affixed to the back
of his pictures, at the time he was living without a domestic. The great
oriental scholar, ANQUETIL DE PERRON, is a recent example of the literary
character carrying his indifference to privations to the very cynicism of
poverty; and he seems to exult over his destitution with the same pride as
others would expatiate over their possessions. Yet we must not forget, to
use the words of Lord Bacon, that "judging that means were to be spent
upon learning, and not learning to be applied to means," DE PERRON refused
the offer of thirty thousand livres for his copy of the "Zend-avesta."
Writing to some Bramins, he describes his life at Paris to be much like
their own. "I subsist on the produce of my literary labours without
revenue, establishment, or place. I have no wife nor children; alone,
absolutely free, but always the friend of men of probity. In a perpetual
war with my senses, I triumph over the attractions of the world or I
contemn them."

This ascetic existence is not singular. PARINI, a great modern poet of
Italy, whom the Milanese point out to strangers as the glory of their
city, lived in the same state of unrepining poverty. Mr. Hobhouse has
given us this self-portrait of the poet:--

Me, non nato a percotere
Le dure illustri porte,
Nudo accorra, ma libero
Il regno della morte.

Naked, but free! A life of hard deprivations was long that of the
illustrious LINNAEUS. Without fortune, to that great mind it never seemed
necessary to acquire any. Perigrinating on foot with a stylus, a
magnifying-glass, and a basket for plants, he shared the rustic meal of
the peasant. Never was glory obtained at a cheaper rate! exclaims one of
his eulogists. Satisfied with the least of the little, he only felt one
perpetual want--that of completing his Flors. Not that LINNAEUS was
insensible to his situation, for he gave his name to a little flower in
Lapland--the _Linnaea Borealis,_ from the fanciful analogy he discovered
between its character and his own early fate, "a little northern plant
flowering early, depressed, abject, and long overlooked." The want of
fortune, however, did not deprive this man of genius of his true glory,
nor of that statue raised to him in the gardens of the University of
Upsal, nor of that solemn eulogy delivered by a crowned head, nor of those
medals which his nation struck to commemorate the genius of the three
kingdoms of nature!

This, then, is the race who have often smiled at the light regard of their
good neighbours when contrasted with their own celebrity; for in poverty
and in solitude such men are not separated from their fame; that is ever
proceeding, ever raising a secret, but constant, triumph in their
minds.[A]

Yes! Genius, undegraded and unexhausted, may indeed even in a garret glow
in its career; but it must be on the principle which induced ROUSSEAU
solemnly to renounce writing "_par metier_." This in the _Journal de
Scavans_ he once attempted, but found himself quite inadequate to "the
profession."[B] In a garret, the author of the "Studies of Nature," as he
exultingly tells us, arranged his work. "It was in a little garret, in the
new street of St. Etienne du Mont, where I resided four years, in the
midst of physical and domestic afflictions. But there I enjoyed the most
exquisite pleasures of my life, amid profound solitude and an enchanting
horizon. There I put the finishing hand to my 'Studies of Nature,' and
there I published them." Pope, one day taking his usual walk with Harte
in the Haymarket, desired him to enter a little shop, where going up three
pair of stairs into a small room, Pope said, "In this garret AUDISON
wrote his 'Campaign!'" To the feelings of the poet this garret had become
a consecrated spot; Genius seemed more itself, placed in contrast with its
miserable locality!

[Footnote A: Spagnoletto, while sign-painting at Rome, attracted by his
ability the notice of a cardinal, who ultimately gave him a home in his
palace; but the artist, feeling that his poverty was necessary to his
industry and independence, fled to Naples, and recommenced a life of
labour.--ED.]

[Footnote B: Twice he repeated this resolution. See his Works, vol. xxxi,
p. 283; vol. xxxii. p. 90.]

The man of genius wrestling with oppressive fortune, who follows the
avocations of an author as a precarious source of existence, should take
as the model of the authorial life, that of Dr. JOHNSON. The dignity of
the literary character was as deeply associated with his feelings, and the
"reverence thyself" as present to his mind, when doomed to be one of the
_Helots_ of literature, by Osborn, Cave, and Miller, as when, in the
honest triumph of Genius, he repelled a tardy adulation of the lordly
Chesterfield. Destitute of this ennobling principle, the author sinks into
the tribe of those rabid adventurers of the pen who have masked the
degraded form of the literary character under the assumed title of
"authors by profession"[A]--the GUTHRIES, the RALPHS, and the AMHURSTS[B].
"There are worse evils for the literary man," says a living author, who
himself is the true model of the great literary character, "than neglect,
poverty, imprisonment, and death. There are even more pitiable objects
than Chatterton himself with the poison at his lips." "I should die with
hunger were I at peace with the world!" exclaimed a corsair of literature
--and dashed his pen into the black flood before him of soot and gall.

[Footnote A: From an original letter which I have published from GUTHRIE
to a minister of state, this modern phrase appears to have been his own
invention. The principle unblushingly avowed, required the sanction of a
respectable designation. I have preserved it in "Calamities of Authors."]

[Footnote B: For some account of these men, see "Calamities of Authors."]

In substituting fortune for the object of his designs, the man of genius
deprives himself of those heats of inspiration reserved for him who lives
for himself; the _mollia tempora fandi_ of Art. If he be subservient to
the public taste, without daring to raise it to his own, the creature of
his times has not the choice of his subjects, which choice is itself a
sort of invention. A task-worker ceases to think his own thoughts. The
stipulated price and time are weighing on his pen or his pencil, while the
hour-glass is dropping its hasty sands. If the man of genius would be
wealthy and even luxurious, another fever besides the thirst of glory
torments him. Such insatiable desires create many fears, and a mind in
fear is a mind in slavery. In one of SHAKSPEARE'S sonnets he pathetically
laments this compulsion of his necessities which forced him to the trade
of pleasing the public; and he illustrates this degradation by a novel
image. "Chide Fortune," cries the bard,--

The guilty goddess of my harmless deeds,
That did not better for my life provide
Than public means which public manners breeds;
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand;
_And almost thence my nature is subdued
To what it works in_, LIKE THE DYER'S HAND.

Such is the fate of that author, who, in his variety of task-works, blue,
yellow, and red, lives without ever having shown his own natural
complexion. We hear the eloquent truth from one who has alike shared in
the bliss of composition, and the misery of its "daily bread." "A single
hour of composition won from the business of the day, is worth more than
the whole day's toil of him who works at the _trade of literature_: in the
one case, the spirit comes joyfully to refresh itself, like a hart to the
waterbrooks; in the other, it pursues its miserable way, panting and
jaded, with the dogs of hunger and necessity behind."[A] We trace the fate
of all task-work in the history of POUSSIN, when called on to reside at
the French court. Labouring without intermission, sometimes on one thing
and sometimes on another, and hurried on in things which required both
time and thought, he saw too clearly the fatal tendency of such a life,
and exclaimed, with ill-suppressed bitterness, "If I stay long in this
country, I shall turn dauber like the rest here." The great artist
abruptly returned to Rome to regain the possession of his own thoughts.

[Footnote A: _Quarterly Review_, vol. viii. p. 538.]

It has been a question with some, more indeed abroad than at home, whether
the art of instructing mankind by the press would not be less suspicious
in its character, were it less interested in one of its prevalent motives?
Some noble self-denials of this kind are recorded. The principle of
emolument will produce the industry which furnishes works for popular
demand; but it is only the principle of honour which can produce the
lasting works of genius. BOILEAU seems to censure Racine for having
accepted money for one of his dramas, while he, who was not rich, gave
away his polished poems to the public. He seems desirous of raising the
art of writing to a more disinterested profession than any other,
requiring no fees for the professors. OLIVET presented his elaborate
edition of Cicero to the world, requiring no other remuneration than
its glory. MILTON did not compose his immortal work for his trivial
copyright;[A] and LINNAEUS sold his labours for a single ducat. The Abbe
MABLY, the author of many political and moral works, lived on little, and
would accept only a few presentation copies from the booksellers. But,
since we have become a nation of book-collectors, and since there exists,
as Mr. Coleridge describes it, "a reading public," this principle of
honour is altered. Wealthy and even noble authors are proud to receive the
largest tribute to their genius, because this tribute is the certain
evidence of the number who pay it. The property of a book, therefore,
represents to the literary candidate the collective force of the thousands
of voters on whose favour his claims can only exist. This change in the
affairs of the literary republic in our country was felt by GIBBON, who
has fixed on "the patronage of booksellers" as the standard of public
opinion: "the measure of their liberality," he says, "is the least
ambiguous test of our common success." The philosopher accepted it as a
substitute for that "friendship or favour of princes, of which he could
not boast." The same opinion was held by JOHNSON. Yet, looking on the
present state of English literature, the most profuse perhaps in Europe,
we cannot refrain from thinking that the "patronage of booksellers" is
frequently injurious to the great interests of literature.

[Footnote A: The agreement made with Simmons, the publisher, was 5_l_.
down, and 5_l_. more when 1500 copies were sold, the same sum to be paid
for the second and third editions, each of the same number of copies.
Milton only lived during the publication of two editions, and his widow
parted with all her right in the work to the same bookseller for eight
pounds. Her autograph receipt was in the possession of the late Dawson
Turner.--ED.]

The dealers in enormous speculative purchases are only subservient to the
spirit of the times. If they are the purveyors, they are also the
panders of public taste; and their vaunted patronage only extends to
popular subjects; while their urgent demands are sure to produce hasty
manufactures. A precious work on a recondite subject, which may have
consumed the life of its author, no bookseller can patronise; and whenever
such a work is published, the author has rarely survived the long season
of the public's neglect. While popular works, after some few years of
celebrity, have at length been discovered not worth the repairs nor the
renewal of their lease of fame, the neglected work of a nobler design
rises in value and rarity. The literary work which requires the greatest
skill and difficulty, and the longest labour, is not commercially valued
with that hasty, spurious novelty; for which the taste of the public is
craving, from the strength of its disease rather than of its appetite.
ROUSSEAU observed, that his musical opera, the work of five or six weeks,
brought him as much money as he had received for his "Emile," which had
cost him twenty years of meditation, and three years of composition. This
single fact represents a hundred. So fallacious are public opinion and the
patronage of booksellers!

Such, then, is the inadequate remuneration of a life devoted to
literature; and notwithstanding the more general interest excited by its
productions within the last century, it has not essentially altered their
situation in society; for who is deceived by the trivial exultation of the
gay sparkling scribbler who lately assured us that authors now dip their
pens in silver ink-standishes, and have a valet for an amanuensis?
Fashionable writers must necessarily get out of fashion; it is the
inevitable fate of the material and the manufacturer. An eleemosynary fund
can provide no permanent relief for the age and sorrows of the unhappy men
of science and literature; and an author may even have composed a work
which shall be read by the next generation as well as the present, and
still be left in a state even of pauperism. These victims perish in
silence! No one has attempted to suggest even a palliative for this great
evil; and when I asked the greatest genius of our age to propose some
relief for this general suffering, a sad and convulsive nod, a shrug that
sympathised with the misery of so many brothers, and an avowal that even
he could not invent one, was all that genius had to alleviate the forlorn
state of the literary character.[A]

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