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Literary Character of Men of Genius by Isaac Disraeli

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Others have strenuously denied that we are born with any peculiar species
of mind, and resolve the mysterious problem into _capacity_, of which men
only differ in the degree. They can perceive no distinction between the
poetical and the mathematical genius; and they conclude that a man of
genius, possessing a general capacity, may become whatever he chooses, but
is determined by his first acquired habit to be what he is.[A]

In substituting the term _capacity_ for that of _genius_, the origin or
nature remains equally occult. How is it acquired, or how is it inherent?
To assert that any man of genius may become what he wills, those most
fervently protest against who feel that the character of genius is such
that it cannot be other than it is; that there is an identity of minds,
and that there exists an interior conformity as marked and as perfect as
the exterior physiognomy. A Scotch metaphysician has recently declared
that "Locke or Newton might have been as eminent poets as Homer or Milton,
had they given themselves early to the study of poetry." It is well to
know how far this taste will go. We believe that had these philosophers
obstinately, against nature, persisted in the attempt, as some have
unluckily for themselves, we should have lost two great philosophers, and
have obtained two supernumerary poets.[B]

It would be more useful to discover another source of genius for
philosophers and poets, less fallible than the gratuitous assumptions of
these theorists. An adequate origin for peculiar qualities in the mind may
be found in that constitutional or secret propensity which adapts some for
particular pursuits, and forms the _predisposition_ of genius.

[Footnote A: Johnson once asserted, that "the supposition of one man
having more imagination, another more judgment, is not true; it is only
one man has _more mind_ than another. He who has vigour may walk to the
east as well as the west, if he happens to turn his head that way." Godwin
was persuaded that all genius is a mere _acquisition_, for he hints at
"infusing it," and making it a thing "heritable." A reversion which has
been missed by the many respectable dunces who have been sons of men of
genius.]

[Footnote B: This very Scotch metaphysician, at the instant he lays down
this postulate, acknowledges that "Dr. Beattie had talents for a _poet_,
but apparently not for a _philosopher_." It is amusing to learn another
result of his ungenial metaphysics. This sage demonstrates and concludes
in these words, "It will therefore be found, with little exception, that
_a great poet is but an ordinary genius_." Let this sturdy Scotch
metaphysician never approach Pegasus--he has to fear, not his wings, but
his heels. If some have written on genius with a great deal too much,
others have written without any.]

Not that we are bound to demonstrate what our adversaries have failed
in proving; we may still remain ignorant of the nature of genius, and
yet be convinced that they have not revealed it. The phenomena of
_predisposition_ in the mind are not more obscure and ambiguous than
those which have been assigned as the sources of genius in certain
individuals. For is it more difficult to conceive that a person bears in
his constitutional disposition a germ of native aptitude which is
developing itself to a predominant character of genius, which breaks forth
in the temperament and moulds the habits, than to conjecture that these
men of genius could not have been such but from _accident_, or that they
differ only in their _capacity_?

Every class of men of genius has distinct habits; all poets resemble one
another, as all painters and all mathematicians. There is a conformity in
the cast of their minds, and the quality of each is distinct from the
other, and the very faculty which fits them for one particular pursuit, is
just the reverse required for another. If these are truisms, as they may
appear, we need not demonstrate that from which we only wish to draw our
conclusion. Why does this remarkable similarity prevail through the
classes of genius? Because each, in their favourite production, is working
with the same appropriate organ. The poetical eye is early busied with
imagery; as early will the reveries of the poetical mind be busied with
the passions; as early will the painter's hand be copying forms and
colours; as early will the young musician's ear wander in the creation of
sounds, and the philosopher's head mature its meditations. It is then the
aptitude of the appropriate organ, however it varies in its character, in
which genius seems most concerned, and which is connatural and connate
with the individual, and, as it was expressed in old days, is _born_ with
him. There seems no other source of genius; for whenever this has been
refused by nature, as it is so often, no theory of genius, neither habit
nor education, have ever supplied its want. To discriminate between the
_habit_ and the _predisposition_ is quite impossible; because whenever
great genius discovers itself, as it can only do by continuity, it has
become a habit with the individual; it is the fatal notion of habit having
the power of generating genius, which has so long served to delude the
numerous votaries of mediocrity. Natural or native power is enlarged by
art; but the most perfect art has but narrow limits, deprived of natural
disposition.

A curious decision on this obscure subject may be drawn from an admirable
judge of the nature of genius. AKENSIDE, in that fine poem which forms its
history, tracing its source, sang,

From Heaven my strains begin, from Heaven descends
The flame of genius to _the human breast_.

But in the final revision of that poem, which he left many years after,
the bard has vindicated the solitary and independent origin of genius, by
the mysterious epithet,

THE CHOSEN BREAST.

The veteran poet was, perhaps, schooled by the vicissitudes of his own
poetical life, and those of some of his brothers.

Metaphors are but imperfect illustrations in metaphysical inquiries:
usually they include too little or take in too much. Yet fanciful
analogies are not willingly abandoned. The iconologists describe Genius as
a winged child with a flame above its head; the wings and the flame
express more than some metaphysical conclusions. Let me substitute
for "the white paper" of Locke, which served the philosopher in his
description of the operations of the senses on the mind, a less artificial
substance. In the soils of the earth we may discover that variety of
primary qualities which we believe to exist in human minds. The botanist
and the geologist always find the nature of the strata indicative of its
productions; the meagre light herbage announces the poverty of the soil it
covers, while the luxuriant growth of plants betrays the richness of the
matrix in which the roots are fixed. It is scarcely reasoning by analogy
to apply this operating principle of nature to the faculties of men.

But while the origin and nature of that faculty which we understand by the
term Genius remain still wrapt up in its mysterious bud, may we not trace
its history in its votaries? If Nature overshadow with her wings her first
causes, still the effects lie open before us, and experience and
observation will often deduce from consciousness what we cannot from
demonstration. If Nature, in some of her great operations, has kept back
her last secrets; if Newton, even in the result of his reasonings, has
religiously abstained from penetrating into her occult connexions, is it
nothing to be her historian, although we cannot be her legislator?




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 first applies to is commonly his delight afterwards.
--Facts of the decisive character of genius.


We are entering into a fairy land, touching only shadows, and chasing the
most changeable lights; many stories we shall hear, and many scenes will
open on us; yet though realities are but dimly to be traced in this
twilight of imagination and tradition, we think that the first impulses of
genius may be often illustrated by the subsequent actions of the
individual; and whenever we find these in perfect harmony, it will be
difficult to convince us that there does not exist a secret connexion
between those first impulses and these last actions.

Can we then trace in the faint lines of his youth an unsteady outline of
the man? In the temperament of genius may we not reasonably look for
certain indications or predispositions, announcing the permanent
character? Is not great sensibility born with its irritable fibres? Will
not the deep retired character cling to its musings? And the unalterable
being of intrepidity and fortitude, will he not, commanding even amidst
his sports, lead on his equals? The boyhood of Cato was marked by the
sternness of the man, observable in his speech, his countenance, and his
puerile amusements; and BACON, DESCARTES, HOBBES, GRAY, and others,
betrayed the same early appearance of their intellectual vigour and
precocity of character.

The virtuous and contemplative BOYLE imagined that he had discovered in
childhood that disposition of mind which indicated an instinctive
ingenuousness. An incident which he relates, evinced, as he thought, that
even then he preferred to aggravate his fault rather than consent to
suppress any part of the truth, an effort which had been unnatural to his
mind. His fanciful, yet striking illustration may open our inquiry. "This
trivial passage," the little story alluded to, "I have mentioned now, not
that I think that in itself it deserves a relation, but because as the sun
is seen best at his rising and his setting, so men's native dispositions
are clearliest perceived whilst they are children, and when they are
dying. These little sudden actions are the greatest discoverers of men's
true humours."

ALFIERI, that historian of the literary mind, was conscious that even in
his childhood the peculiarity and the melancholy of his character
prevailed: a boyhood passed in domestic solitude fed the interior feelings
of his impassioned character; and in noticing some incidents of a childish
nature, this man of genius observes, "Whoever will reflect on these inept
circumstances, and explore into the seeds of the passions of man, possibly
may find these neither so laughable nor so puerile as they may appear."
His native genius, or by whatever other term we may describe it, betrayed
the wayward predispositions of some of his poetical brothers: "Taciturn
and placid for the most part, but at times loquacious and most vivacious,
and usually in the most opposite extremes; stubborn and impatient against
force, but most open to kindness, more restrained by the dread of
reprimand than by anything else, susceptible of shame to excess, but
inflexible if violently opposed." Such is the portrait of a child of seven
years old, a portrait which induced the great tragic bard to deduce this
result from his own self-experience, that "_man_ is a continuation of the
_child_."[A]

[Footnote A: See in his Life, chap. iv., entitled _Sviluppo dell' indole
indicato da vari fattarelli_. "Development of genius, or natural
inclination, indicated by various little matters."]

That the dispositions of genius in early life presage its future
character, was long the feeling of antiquity. CICERO, in his "Dialogue on
Old Age," employs a beautiful analogy drawn from Nature, marking her
secret conformity in all things which have life and come from her hands;
and the human mind is one of her plants. "Youth is the vernal season of
life, and the blossoms it then puts forth are indications of those future
fruits which are to be gathered in the succeeding periods." One of the
masters of the human mind, after much previous observation of those who
attended his lectures, would advise one to engage in political studies,
then exhorted another to compose history, elected these to be poets, and
those to be orators; for ISOCRATES believed that Nature had some concern
in forming a man of genius, and endeavoured to guess at her secret by
detecting the first energetic inclination of the mind. This also was the
principle which guided the Jesuits, those other great masters in the art
of education. They studied the characteristics of their pupils with such
singular care, as to keep a secret register in their colleges, descriptive
of their talents, and the natural turn of their dispositions. In some
cases they guessed with remarkable felicity. They described Fontenelle,
_adolescens omnibus numeris absolutus et inter discipulos princeps_, "a
youth accomplished in every respect, and the model for his companions;"
but when they describe the elder Crebillon, _puer ingeniosus sed insignis
nebulo_, "a shrewd boy, but a great rascal," they might not have erred so
much as they appear to have done; for an impetuous boyhood showed the
decision of a character which might not have merely and misanthropically
settled in imaginary scenes of horror, and the invention of characters of
unparalleled atrocity.

In the old romance of King Arthur, when a cowherd comes to the king to
request he would make his son a knight--"It is a great thing thou askest,"
said Arthur, who inquired whether this entreaty proceeded from him or his
son. The old man's answer is remarkable--"Of my son, not of me; for I have
thirteen sons, and all these will fall to that labour I put them; but this
child will not labour for me, for anything that I and my wife will do; but
always he will be shooting and casting darts, and glad for to see battles,
and to behold knights, and always day and night he desireth of me to be
made a knight." The king commanded the cowherd to fetch all his sons;
"they were all shapen much like the poor man; but Tor was not like none of
them in shape and in countenance, for he was much more than any of them.
And so Arthur knighted him." This simple tale is the history of genius--
the cowherd's twelve sons were like himself, but the unhappy genius in the
family, who perplexed and plagued the cowherd and his wife and his twelve
brothers, was the youth averse to the common labour, and dreaming of
chivalry amidst a herd of cows.

A man of genius is thus dropped among the people, and has first to
encounter the difficulties of ordinary men, unassisted by that feeble
ductility which adapts itself to the common destination. Parents are too
often the victims of the decided propensity of a son to a Virgil or a
Euclid; and the first step into life of a man of genius is disobedience
and grief. LILLY, our famous astrologer, has described the frequent
situation of such a youth, like the cowherd's son who would be a knight.
Lilly proposed to his father that he should try his fortune in the
metropolis, where he expected that his learning and his talents would
prove serviceable to him; the father, quite incapable of discovering the
latent genius of his son in his studious disposition, very willingly
consented to get rid of him, for, as Lilly proceeds, "I could not work,
drive the plough, or endure any country labour; my father oft would say I
was _good for nothing_,"--words which the fathers of so many men of genius
have repeated.[A]

[Footnote A: The father of Sir Joshua Reynolds reproached him frequently
in his boyish days for his constant attention to drawing, and wrote on the
back of one of his sketches the condemnatory words, "Done by Joshua out of
pure idleness." Mignard distressed his father the surgeon, by sketching
the expressive faces of his patients instead of attending to their
diseases; and our own Opie, when a boy, and working with his father at his
business as a carpenter, used frequently to excite his anger by drawing
with red chalk on the deal boards he had carefully planed for his trade.
--ED.]

In reading the memoirs of a man of genius, we often reprobate the domestic
persecutions of those who opposed his inclinations. No poet but is moved
with indignation at the recollection of the tutor at the Port Royal thrice
burning the romance which RACINE at length got by heart; no geometrician
but bitterly inveighs against the father of PASCAL for not suffering him
to study Euclid, which he at length understood without studying. The
father of PETRARCH cast to the flames the poetical library of his son,
amidst the shrieks, the groans, and the tears of the youth. Yet this
burnt-offering neither converted Petrarch into a sober lawyer, nor
deprived him of the Roman laurel. The uncle of ALFIERI for more than
twenty years suppressed the poetical character of this noble bard; he was
a poet without knowing how to write a verse, and Nature, like a hard
creditor, exacted, with redoubled interest, all the genius which the uncle
had so long kept from her. These are the men whose inherent impulse no
human opposition, and even no adverse education, can deter from proving
them to be great men.

Let us, however, be just to the parents of a man of genius; they have
another association of ideas respecting him than ourselves. We see a great
man, they a disobedient child; we track him through his glory, they are
wearied by the sullen resistance of one who is obscure and seems useless.
The career of genius is rarely that of fortune or happiness; and the
father, who himself may not be insensible to glory, dreads lest his
son be found among that obscure multitude, that populace of mean artists,
self-deluded yet self-dissatisfied, who must expire at the barriers of
mediocrity.

If the youth of genius be struggling with a concealed impulse, he will
often be thrown into a train of secret instruction which no master can
impart. Hippocrates profoundly observed, that "our _natures_ have not been
taught us by any master." The faculty which the youth of genius displays
in after-life may exist long ere it is perceived; and it will only make
its own what is homogeneous with itself. We may often observe how the mind
of this youth stubbornly rejects whatever is contrary to its habits, and
alien to its affections. Of a solitary character, for solitariness is the
wild nurse of his contemplations, he is fancifully described by one of the
race--and here fancies are facts:

He is retired as noon-tide dew,
Or fountain in a noon-day grove.

The romantic SIDNEY exclaimed, "Eagles fly alone, and they are but sheep
which always herd together."

As yet this being, in the first rudiments of his sensations, is touched by
rapid emotions, and disturbed by a vague restlessness; for him the images
of nature are yet dim, and he feels before he thinks; for imagination
precedes reflection. One truly inspired unfolds the secret story--

Endow'd with all that Nature can bestow,
The child of fancy oft in silence bends
O'er the mixt treasures of his pregnant breast
With conscious pride. From thence he oft resolves
To frame he knows not what excelling things;
And win he knows not what sublime reward
Of praise and wonder!

But the solitude of the youth of genius has a local influence; it is full
of his own creations, of his unmarked passions, and his uncertain
thoughts. The titles which he gives his favourite haunts often intimate
the bent of his mind--its employment, or its purpose; as PETRARCH called
his retreat _Linternum_, after that of his hero Scipio; and a young poet,
from some favourite description in Cowley, called a spot he loved to muse
in, "Cowley's Walk."

A temperament of this kind has been often mistaken for melancholy.[A]
"When the intermission of my studies allowed me leisure for recreation,"
says BOYLE of his early life, "I would very often steal away from all
company, and spend four or five hours alone in the fields, and think at
random; making my delighted imagination the busy scene where some romance
or other was daily acted." This circumstance alarmed his friends, who
concluded that he was overcome with a growing melancholy. ALFIERI found
himself in this precise situation, and experienced these undefinable
emotions, when, in his first travels at Marseilles, his lonely spirit only
haunted the theatre and the seashore: the tragic drama was then casting
its influences over his unconscious genius. Almost every evening, after
bathing in the sea, it delighted him to retreat to a little recess where
the land jutted out; there would he sit, leaning his hack against a high
rock, which he tells us, "concealed from my sight every part of the land
behind me, while before and around me I beheld nothing but the sea and the
heavens: the sun, sinking into the waves, was lighting up and embellishing
these two immensities; there would I pass a delicious hour of fantastic
ruminations, and there I should have composed many a poem, had I then
known to write either in verse or prose in any language whatever."

[Footnote A: This solemnity of manner was aped in the days of Elizabeth
and James I. by such as affected scholar-like habits, and is frequently
alluded to by the satirists of the time. BEN JONSON, in his "Every Man in
his Humour," delineates the "country gull," Master Stephen, as affecting
"to be mightily given to melancholy," and receiving the assurance, "It's
your only fine humour, sir; your true melancholy breeds your perfect fine
wit, sir."--ED.]

An incident of this nature is revealed to us by the other noble and mighty
spirit of our times, who could most truly exhibit the history of the youth
of genius, and he has painted forth the enthusiasm of the boy TASSO:--

--From my very birth
My soul was drunk with love, which did pervade
And mingle with whate'er I saw on earth;
Of objects all inanimate I made
Idols, and out of wild and lonely flowers
And rocks whereby they grew, a paradise,
Where I did lay me down within the shade
Of waving trees, and dream'd uncounted hours,
Though I was chid for wandering.

The youth of genius will be apt to retire from the active sports of his
mates. BEATTIE paints himself in his own Minstrel:

Concourse, and noise, and toil he ever fled,
Nor cared to mingle in the clamorous fray
Of squabbling imps; but to the forest sped.

BOSSUET would not join his young companions, and flew to his solitary
task, while the classical boys avenged themselves by a schoolboy's
villanous pun: stigmatising the studious application of Bossuet by the
_bos suetus aratro_ which frequent flogging had made them classical enough
to quote.

The learned HUET has given an amusing detail of the inventive persecutions
of his schoolmates, to divert him from his obstinate love of study. "At
length, in order to indulge my own taste, I would rise with the sun, while
they were buried in sleep, and hide myself in the woods, that I might read
and study in quiet;" but they beat the bushes, and started in his burrow
the future man of erudition. Sir WILLIAM JONES was rarely a partaker in
the active sports of Harrow; it was said of GRAY that he was never a boy;
the unhappy CHATTERTON and BURNS were singularly serious in youth;[A] as
were HOBBES and BACON. MILTON has preserved for us, in solemn numbers, his
school-life--

When I was yet a child, no childish play
To me was pleasing: all my mind was set
Serious to learn and know, and thence to do
What might be public good: myself I thought
Born to that end, born to promote all truth,
All righteous things.

[Footnote A: Dr. Gregory says of Chatterton, "Instead of the thoughtless
levity of childhood, he possessed the pensiveness, gravity, and melancholy
of maturer life. He was frequently so lost in contemplation, that for many
days together he would say but very little, and that apparently by
constraint. His intimates in the school were few, and those of the most
serious cast." Of Burns, his schoolmaster, Mr. Murdoch, says--"Robert's
countenance was generally grave, and expressive of a serious,
contemplative, and thoughtful mind:"--Ed.]

It is remarkable that this love of repose and musing is retained
throughout life. A man of fine genius is rarely enamoured of common
amusements or of robust exercises; and he is usually unadroit where
dexterity of hand or eye, or trivial elegances, are required. This
characteristic of genius was discovered by HORACE in that Ode which
schoolboys often versify. BEATTIE has expressly told us of his Minstrel,

The exploit of strength, dexterity or speed
To him nor vanity nor joy could bring.

ALFIERI said he could never be taught by a French dancing-master, whose
art made him at once shudder and laugh. HORACE, by his own confession, was
a very awkward rider, and the poet could not always secure a seat on his
mule: METASTASIO humorously complains of his gun; the poetical sportsman
could only frighten the hares and partridges; the, truth was, as an elder
poet sings,

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