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ssed of a noble generosity, as he relieved at a critical moment the necessities of Coleridge at a cost of five hundred pounds. This was at a comparatively early period of De Quincey's life. Afterwards he was himself often in want of a tenth part of the sum. He was a voluminous writer, though not always publishing under his own name; his collection of works as issued in this country, edited by J. T. Fields, forms some twenty volumes. Let us not forget to mention Sydenham, the English scholar who gave us, among other profound works, the best version of Plato, and who breathed his last in a London sponging-house. "Genius," says Whipple, "may almost be defined as the faculty of acquiring poverty."

Some writers have contended, and not without reason, that such adversity was often providential; that without the spur of necessity genius would rarely accomplish its best, and that distress has often elicited talents which would otherwise have remained dormant. In speaking of Burns, Carlyle says: "We question whether for his culture as a poet, poverty and much suffering were not absolutely advantageous. Great men in looking back over their lives have testified to that effect. 'I would not for much,' says Jean Paul, 'that I had been born rich.' And yet Jean Paul's birth was poor enough, for in another place he adds: 'The prisoner's allowance is bread and water, and I have often only the latter.' But the gold that is refined in the hottest furnace comes out the purest; or, as he has himself expressed it, 'the canary-bird sings sweetest the longer it has been trained in a darkened cage.'" Horace emphatically declares, that adversity has the effect of developing talents which prosperous circumstances would not have elicited. The hardships endured by many historic persons crowd upon the mind in this connection. We remember John Bunyan in Bedford jail, writing that immortal work, "Pilgrim's Progress;" Ben Jonson, the comrade of Shakespeare; John Seldon, the profound scholar and author; and Jeremy Taylor, whose "Holy Living and Dying" is only second to "Pilgrim's Progress,"--all of whom endured the suffering of imprisonment. Nor must we forget Sir Walter Raleigh, who during his thirteen years of prison-life produced his incomparable "History of the World." Lydiat, the subtle scholar to whom Dr. Johnson refers, wrote his "Annotations on the Parian Chronicles," while confined for debt in the King's Bench; and Wicquefort's curious work on Ambassadors is dated from the prison to which he was condemned for life. Voltaire wrote his "Henriad" while confined in the Bastile; De Foe produced his best works within the walls of Newgate; and Cervantes gave the world "Don Quixote" from a prison.

Some of the sweetest love-lyrics extant were written by Charles, Duke of Orleans, during his captivity of twenty-five years. Baron Trenck wrote his wonderful book of personal experience during a ten years' captivity in a subterranean dungeon at Magdeburg,--a book which has been translated into every modern language. He was released from prison, but died by the guillotine at Paris in 1794. Silvio Pellico, the Italian poet and dramatist, who wrote the well-known story of his prison life, was ten years confined in the fortress of Spielberg, in Moravia. Ponce de Leon, among the foremost of Spanish poets, as well as the poet Alonzo de Ereilla, were victims of long and severe incarceration because they dared to translate the Biblical Songs of Solomon into Spanish. James Howell, the English author, wrote his "Familiar Letters" in the Fleet Prison. So popular were they, that he had the pleasure of seeing ten editions of them published in rapid succession; this was about the year 1646. William Penn and Roger Williams, both founders of States in this country, suffered imprisonment. The former wrote his well-known "No Cross, No Crown" in the Tower of London. Oakley, the great Oriental scholar, whose remarkable Asiatic researches have rendered his name famous, wrote his work on the Saracens in jail. Cobbett, the political satirist, was no stranger to the inside of a prison; and we all remember Cooper, the English chartist, who made himself famous by his "Prison Rhymes," written behind the frowning bars. Montgomery suffered the same chilling influences for daring to make a public plea for freedom of speech. Theodore Hook, the novelist, delightful miscellaneous writer, and unrivalled wit, was for a long period imprisoned.

Richard Lovelace, the English poet, was a gallant soldier who spilled his blood for his king in the civil war and impoverished himself in the same cause, was imprisoned for political reasons, and died poor and neglected at the age of forty. He wrote to "Lucasta," when going to the wars, that fine and often-quoted couplet:--

"I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not honor more."

Lucasta , to whom his verses were dedicated, was Lady Sacheverell, whom he devotedly loved, but who married another after having been deceived by the false report that Lovelace had been killed. He was liberated from prison under Cromwell, but lived a wretched life thereafter. Leigh Hunt, the most genial of essayists, was imprisoned for two years, when he was visited by Lamb, Byron, and Moore. His offence was a libel on the Prince Regent, afterwards George the Fourth. Madame Guyon wrote the most of her beautiful poems--so greatly admired by Cowper--while a captive for four years in the Bastile. The great public library of Paris contains forty octavo volumes of her writings. Why does not some popular author give us a book upon this theme, and entitle it "Behind the Prison Bars"? The suggestion is freely offered, and is perhaps worth considering. Disraeli tells us: "The gate of the prison has sometimes been the porch of fame."

The reference to Lovelace reminds us that sometimes the female favorites of poets are selected from rather questionable positions, and certainly with very questionable taste. Prior poured out his admiration in verses addressed to Chloe, a fat barmaid; and Bousard addressed poems to Cassandra, who followed the same refining occupation. Colletet, a French bard, addressed his lines to his servant-girl, whom he afterwards married. No doubt that oftenest the poet's mistress has no actual existence, but, like the sculptor's ideal, is the combined result drawn from several choice models.

Gilbert Wakefield, the erudite scholar, theologian, and author, suffered two years' imprisonment for publishing his "Enquiry into the Expediency of Public and Social Worship." "The sentence passed upon him was most infamous," says Rogers, who, in company with his sister, visited the prisoner in Dorchester jail. While incarcerated here, Wakefield wrote his "Noctes Carcerariae" . Matthew Prior, the poet, diplomatist, courtier, and versatile author, was the son of a joiner, though it is not known exactly where he was born. Chancing to interest the Earl of Dorset, he was educated at the cost of that liberal nobleman. He was one of those, as Dr. Johnson said, "that have burst out from an obscure original to great eminence." Thackeray says of him, "He loved, he drank, he sang; and he was certainly deemed one of the brightest lights of Queen Anne's reign." His contempt for pedigree was very natural, and was wittily expressed in the epitaph which he wrote for himself:--

"Nobles and heralds, by your leave, Here lies what once was Matthew Prior; The son of Adam and of Eve: Can Bourbon or Nassau claim higher?"

Schumann, the German musical composer, author of "Paradise and the Peri," in a fit of mental depression threw himself into the Rhine, but was rescued. Goethe, Alfieri, Raphael, and George Sand all struggled against a nearly fatal temptation to end their earthly careers. The last named declared that at the sight of a body of water or a precipice she could hardly restrain herself from committing suicide! "Genius bears within itself a principle of destruction, of death, and of madness," says Lamartine. De Quincey, who was never quite sane, was given to queer habits in connection with his literary work. He was wont to keep his manuscripts stored in his bath-tub, and carried his money in his hat. Cowper, after a fruitless attempt to hang himself, became a religious monomaniac, "hovering in the twilight of reason and the dawn of insanity." Moore, the gay, vivacious, witty, diner-out, sank finally into childish imbecility. John Clare, the English peasant poet, was born in poverty; his early productions accidentally attracted attention and gained him patrons, but after a brief, irregular, unhappy career he died in an insane asylum. So also died Charles Fenno Hoffman, our own popular poet, editor, and novelist, who wrote "Sparkling and Bright." Cruden, the industrious author and compiler of the Biblical Concordance, suffered from long fits of insanity; and so did Jeremy Bentham, though he lived to extreme old age, and died so late as 1832. Congreve said it was the prerogative of great souls to be wretched; and Jean Paul, that great souls attract sorrows as lofty mountains do storms. Lenau, the Hungarian lyric poet, died in a mad-house; in the height of his fame he refused, when invited, to visit an asylum, saying, "I shall be there soon enough as it is." It would seem but charitable to attribute fits of insanity to Carlyle, who pronounced most of his contemporaries "fools and lunatics." His wife confessed that she felt as if she were keeping a mad-house. Vaugelas died in such poverty that he bequeathed his body to the surgeons at Paris for a given sum with which to pay his last board-bill. In his will he wrote: "As there may still remain creditors unpaid after all that I have shall be disposed of, it is my last wish that my body should be sold to the surgeons to the best advantage, and that the purchase-money should go to discharge those debts which I owe to society, so that if I could not while living, at least when dead I may be useful." Vaugelas was called the owl, because he ventured forth only at night, through fear of his creditors.

But we were considering the past, not the present. Robert Heron, author, scholar, teacher, who wrote much that will live in literature, died in hopeless poverty. His "History of Scotland" and his "Universal Geography" are still among our best books of reference. He says of himself in a paper written just before he died: "The tenor of my life has been temperate, laborious, humble, and quiet, and, to the utmost of my power, beneficent. For these last three months I have been brought to the very extremity of bodily and pecuniary distress, and I shudder at the thought of perishing in jail." Yet such was his fate; he died in Newgate. Thomas Decker, the English author, and collaborator with Ford and Rowley in the production of popular dramas, died in a debtor's prison. Christopher Smart, the personal friend of Dr. Johnson, produced his principal poem while confined in a mad-house. Richard Savage, the English poet, experienced a life which reads like fiction. The natural son of an English earl and countess, he was abandoned by his mother to the care of a nurse who brought him up in ignorance of his parentage. Before he was thirty years of age he was tried and condemned for murder; and, though finally pardoned, he died in jail. During a considerable portion of the time that Savage was engaged upon his tragedy of "Sir Thomas Overbury," he was without lodgings and often without meat; nor had he any other convenience for study and composition than the open fields or the public streets. Having formed his sentences and speeches in his mind, he would step into a shop, ask for pen and ink, and write down what he had composed upon such scraps of paper as he had picked up by chance, often from the street gutters.

Thomas Hood, the famous English humorist, began at first as a clerk in a store, then became apprentice to an engraver; but his genius soon led him to seek literary occupation as a regular means of support. He was endowed with an unlimited fund of wit and comic power. His "Song of the Shirt" showed that he had also great tenderness and pathos in his nature. He edited various magazines and weekly papers, and published two or three humorous books; but his career was far from a success in any light. His life was occupied in incessant brain-work, aggravated by ill-health and the many uncertainties of authorship. He finally died poor in his forty-seventh year, leaving a dependent family.

William Thom was an English poet of genius, but very humbly born. He was at first a weaver and afterwards a strolling pedler, often only too glad to obtain a lodging in a country barn. The poor fellow said, "There's much good sleeping to be had in a hayloft." In one of these deplorable shelters his only child, who followed him, perished from hunger and exposure. Thom published so late as 1844 a collection of his poems entitled, "Rhymes and Recollections of a Hand-Weaver." The volume was well received, and the author was given a dinner by his London admirers. He died at the age of fifty-nine in extreme poverty. We find two admirable poems by him in Sargent's "British and American Poets."

The reader who has perused these pages thus far will doubtless have come to the conclusion that even talent is not developed as a rule in calm and sunshine, but that it must encounter the tempest in some form before the fruit can ripen. Byron, in the third canto of "Childe Harold," thus gloomily declares the penalties of becoming famous:--

Longfellow's idea is true and forcible: "Time has a doomsday book, in which he is continually recording illustrious names. But as soon as a new name is written there, an old one disappears. Only a few stand in illumined characters never to be effaced."

Our familiar gossip thus far concerning those whose lives by universal consent, "rising above the deluge of years," bear the impress of genius, has led us to speak of the hardships and vicissitudes to which they have so often been subjected. At this sad yet interesting aspect of genius we will continue to glance, observing, as hitherto, no chronological order, but discussing the personalities of each character as they are unrolled before us on the panorama of memory.

Handel, most original of composers, after losing his entire fortune in a legitimate effort to further the interests of the art he loved so well, passed the last of his life in the gloom of blindness. His glorious oratorios were most of them produced under the stress of keen adversity, loss of fortune, and failing health, quite sufficient to have discouraged any one not truly inspired. Mozart also labored under the ban of poverty. He was glad to accept even the position of chapel-master. It is well known that during the composition of some of his masterpieces he and his family suffered for bread. The great composer was so absorbed in music that he was but a child in matters of business. Whatever may be the true definition of genius, perseverance and application form no inconsiderable part of it. "It is a very great error," said Mozart, "to suppose that my art has been easily acquired. I assure you that there is scarcely any one that has so worked at the study of composition as I have. You could hardly mention any famous composer whose writings I have not diligently and repeatedly studied throughout." A boy came to Mozart wishing to compose something, and inquiring the way to begin. Mozart told him to wait. "You composed much earlier," said the youth. "But asked nothing about it," replied the musician. Willmott says very truly that genius finds its own road and carries its own lamp.

We have seen that Goldsmith produced some of his finest literary work under stress of circumstances. "Oh, gods! gods!" he exclaimed to his friend Bryanton, "here in a garret, writing for bread and expecting to be dunned for a milk-score!" Like so many other children of genius, he was careless, extravagant, irregular, always in debt and difficulty, all which hurried him to his grave. He died at the age of forty-five. When, on his death-bed, the physician asked him if his mind was at ease, he answered, "No, it is not!" and these were his last words. In that exquisite story, the "Vicar of Wakefield," we have the explanation of how he supported himself while on his travels. "I had some knowledge of music," he says, "and now turned what was once my amusement into a present means of subsistence. Whenever I approached a peasant's house towards nightfall, I played one of my most merry tunes; and that procured me not only a lodging, but subsistence for the next day." Goldsmith's many faults were all on the amiable side, though he was perhaps a little inclined to find fault with his ill-fortune in good set phrases. Sometimes we are forced to remember that the misery which can so readily find relief in words of complaint is not dissimilar to that love which Thackeray thought quite a bearable malady when finding an outlet in rhyme and prose. Real suffering and profound sorrow are nearly always silent in proportion to their depth. It is evanescent afflictions which most readily find tongue. "To write well," says Madame de Sta?l, "we should feel truly; but not, as Corinne did, heartbreakingly." If Goldsmith did grumble, he had bitter cause. At one time having pawned everything that would bring money, he resorted to writing ballads at five shillings apiece, going out secretly in the evening to hear them sung in the streets. His five shillings were often shared with some importunate beggar. One day he gave away his bed-clothes to a poor woman who had none; and then, feeling cold at night, he ripped open his bed and was found lying up to his chin in the feathers! The very name of Goldsmith seems to us to ring with a generous tone of unselfishness and human sympathy. The story is true of his leaving the card-table to relieve a poor woman whose voice as she sang some ditty in passing on the street came to his sensitive ear indicating distress. Not a line can be found in all his productions where he has written severely against any one, though he was himself the subject of bitter criticism and literary abuse. He was not a very thorough reader of books, but owed his ability as a writer more to the keenness of his observation. Nature and life were the books he studied; which was simply going to the fountain-head for his information.

Machiavelli, the renowned Italian statesman, philosopher, and dramatist, whose picturesque history of Florence alone would have entitled him to fame, was entirely misconstrued by the times in which he lived, suffering imprisonment, torture, and banishment in the cause of public liberty. Macaulay says of him: "The name of a man whose genius has illumined all the dark places of policy, and to whose patriotic wisdom an oppressed people owed their last chance of emancipation, passed into a proverb of infamy." The victim of one age often becomes the idol of the next. Dante, expatriated, and exiled from wife and children, is not forgotten. The greatest genius between the Augustan and Elizabethan ages, an accomplished musician, a painter of no mean repute, and a brilliant scholar, he yet enjoyed no contemporary fame. "The inventor of the spinning-jenny is pretty sure of his reward in his own day," says Carlyle; "but the writer of a true poem, like the apostle of a true religion, is nearly as sure of the contrary." Dante poured out the deep devotion of his youthful heart at the feet of that Beatrice whose name he has rendered classic by the genius of his pen, though she did not live to bless him. His later marriage was ill-assorted and unhappy. The sublime and unique "Divine Comedy" was not even published until after its author's death. Now the pilgrim bends with reverence over the grave whither he was hurried by persecution. How absurd are the transitions of which human appreciation is capable! Even the cool, philosophical Carlyle was struck with admiration of the poet's devotion. He says: "I know not in the world an affection equal to that of Dante. It is a tenderness, a trembling, longing, pitying love, like the wail of AEolian harps,--soft, soft, like a child's young heart; one likens it to the song of angels; it is among the purest utterances of affection, perhaps the very purest that ever came out of a human soul."

Hard indeed seems to have been the fate of the Italian dramatist and poet, Bentivoglio, who, after impoverishing himself in acts of charity, literally selling all and giving the proceeds to the poor, when old and miserable was refused admission into a hospital which he had himself founded in his days of prosperity. Kotzebue, the German author and dramatist, who wrote that remarkable play "The Stranger," was a man beset with morbid melancholy, causing him to pray for death, which came at last by a murderous hand. Philip Massinger, the creator of "Sir Giles Overreach," a dramatic conception almost worthy of Shakespeare, despite his rare and wondrous powers, was the child of adversity. Massinger wrote in conjunction with Beaumont and Fletcher, they getting whatever of credit was earned by the three. In those days, an established writer for the stage would frequently utilize the brains of others of less note, calling them to aid in productions which bore only the employer's name. There seemed to be no sunshine in Massinger's life; it was all in shadow. Could anything be more pathetic than this brief entry in the death chronicle of a London parish, under date of March 20, 1639: "Buried--Philip Massinger--a stranger."

Erasmus, the Dutch scholar and philosopher, defrauded of his patrimony while an orphan of tender years, devoted himself to learning, and cheerfully submitted to every deprivation to secure it. While pursuing his studies in Paris he was clothed in rags, and his form was cadaverous from want of food. It was at this time that he wrote to a friend, "As soon as I get any money, I will buy first Greek books and then clothes." Thus nurtured in the school of adversity, he rose to a proud distinction; and to him, more than to any other writer, was attributed the success of the Reformation,--it being expressively remarked that he laid the egg which Luther hatched. If it be true that an atmosphere of hardship is necessary to the nurture of genius, then certainly Erasmus encountered the requisite discipline; but as Dr. Johnson says in his epigrammatic way, "there is a frightful interval between the seed and the timber." Death is the dropping of the flower that the fruit may ripen. Thus fame may follow, but seldom is contemporary; nor does true genius fail to recognize this. Milton's ambition, to use his own words, was, "to leave something, so written, to after ages that they should not willingly let it die;" and Cato said he had rather posterity should inquire why no statues were erected to him, than why they were. Motherwell calls fame "a flower upon a dead man's heart." Were it otherwise, were fame contemporary, it would be but the breath of popular applause, the shallowest phase of reputation. "I always distrust the accounts of eminent men by their contemporaries," says Samuel Rogers. "None of us has any reason to slander Homer or Julius Caesar; but we find it difficult to divest ourselves of prejudices when we are writing about persons with whom we have been acquainted."

It is tears which wash the eyes of poor humanity, and enable it to see the previously invisible land of beauty; it is threshing which separates the wheat from the chaff; every ripened genius has passed its Gethsemane hours. "The eternal stars shine out as soon as it is dark enough!" says Carlyle. Izaak Walton, the delightful biographer and charming miscellaneous writer, was an humble hosier in London in early life. It was sorrow caused by the death of his wife and children in the stived quarters of a poor city tradesman, which led him finally to turn his back upon the great metropolis and seek a home in the country. What seemed to him to be "dim funereal tapers," proved to be "heaven's distant lamps." Influenced by the inspiring surroundings of Nature, he produced his "Complete Angler;" of which Charles Lamb said, "It might sweeten a man's temper at any time to read it," and which modern criticism has pronounced one of the best pastorals in the English language. Spenser, author of the "Faerie Queene," of whose birth little is known, died in great destitution, though he was buried near Chaucer in Westminster Abbey. Of his poetry Campbell says: "He threw the soul of harmony into our verse, and made it more warmly, tenderly, and magnificently descriptive than it ever was before, or, with a few exceptions, it has ever been since." The best critics agree that the originality and richness of his allegorical personages vie with the splendor of ancient mythology.

Let us not forget to speak of Schiller in his early indigence and distress, wanting friends and wanting bread, but yet bravely fighting the battle of life. The humble cottage is still extant, near Leipsic, where he wrote the "Song of Joy" in those trying days. We recall Crabbe, stern poet of life's strivings and hardships, reduced to the verge of starvation, and only relieved by the noble charity of Edmund Burke; and Otway, one of the most admirable of English dramatists, author of "Venice Preserved," choked to death by the crust of bread he eagerly swallowed when weakened by famine. Butler, the author of "Hudibras," died in poverty in a London garret. Santara, the famous French painter, died neglected and penniless in a pauper hospital. Andrea del Sarto labored hard and patiently at a tailor's bench to procure the means of pursuing art; and Benvenuto Cellini languished in the dungeons of San Angelo.

We have spoken of De Foe in prison, he who produced two hundred volumes, yet died insolvent. Dr. Johnson said there was never anything written by man that was wished longer by its readers, except "Don Quixote," "Robinson Crusoe," and "Pilgrim's Progress." The author of "Robinson Crusoe" says of himself: "I have gone through a life of wonders, and am the subject of a great variety of providences. I have been fed more by miracles than Elijah when the ravens were his purveyors. In the school of affliction I have learned more philosophy than at the academy, and more divinity than from the pulpit. In prison I have learned that liberty does not consist in open doors and the egress and regress of locomotion. I have seen the rough side of the world as well as the smooth, and have in less than half a year tasted the difference between the closet of a king and the dungeon of Newgate." "Talent is often to be envied," says Holmes, "and genius very commonly to be pitied; it stands twice the chance of the other of dying in a hospital, in jail, in debt, in bad repute."

The example of Robert Greene's life carries with it an impressive moral. He was well educated, taking his degree at Cambridge, England, and was a successful playwright and poet; but he was also improvident and reckless in his life, exhibiting more than the usual eccentricities of genius. He squandered his patrimony in dissipation, and died in great poverty. His last book, "The Groatsworth of Wit bought with a Million of Repentance," is a book both curious and rare.

With all his dissipated proclivities, Henry Fielding had much more genius than Robert Greene. He too was constantly poor through his own recklessness. Lady Montagu, who was a kinswoman of his, said: "He was always wanting money, and would have wanted it had his hereditary lands been as extensive as his imagination." And yet he was a marvel of industry, ever slaving with the pen, writing often under excruciating pain, and producing his most famous work, "Tom Jones," as has been said, with an ache and a pain to every sentence. He was, as usual, very short of money when this work was finished, and tried to sell it to a second-class publisher for twenty-five pounds. Thomson the poet heard of this from Fielding, and told him to come to Miller the book-publisher. This individual gave it to his wife to read, and she bade him to secure it by all means; so the publisher offered the impecunious author two hundred guineas for it, and the bargain was closed, to the entire satisfaction of both parties. Critics have remarked upon the similarity between Steele and Fielding, though attributing the greater genius and learning to the latter. They were certainly alike in one respect; namely, as regarded a chronic state of impecuniosity.

Fielding said of himself that he had no choice but to be a hackney writer or a hackney coachman for a living. His genius deserved a better fate. Owing to his poverty he was forced to throw upon the market many productions which he had much better have thrown into the fire. Fortunately, in literature it is the rule that the unworthy perishes, and only the good remains. Many of Fielding's works have a just and lasting fame, and no library is complete without them. In spite of his many imperfections, which made brusque Dr. Johnson refuse to sit at table with him, there was much that was fine and lovable in Harry Fielding,--truthful, generous to a fault, and with wit and wisdom marvellously combined. Gibbon, speaking of his own genealogy, refers to the fact of Fielding being of the same family as the Earl of Denbigh, who, in common with the imperial family of Austria, is descended from the celebrated Rodolph of Hapsburg. "While one branch," he says, "have contented themselves with being sheriffs of Leicestershire and justices of the peace, the other has furnished emperors of Germany and kings of Spain; but the magnificent romance of 'Tom Jones' will be read with pleasure when the palace of the Escurial is in ruins and the imperial eagle of Austria is rolling in the dust."

Justice, like the sword of Damocles, is ever suspended. Nemesis is not dead, but sleepeth. Sometimes old age seizes upon an ill-spent life, and gives us a striking example of the vicissitudes of genius. Dean Swift, the great master of biting satire and felicitous analogy, possessing the rarest qualities of wit, humor, and eloquence, was yet so paradoxical and inconsistent withal, as to lie under the suspicion of madness half of his life. Ambitious, talented, ever seeking preferment, never satisfied, now a busy Whig and now a noisy Tory, he was a perfect brigand in politics, and his motto was, "Stand and deliver." Swift's bitterness, scorn, and subsequent misanthropy were the sequence of disappointment. "All my endeavors to distinguish myself," he wrote to Bolingbroke, "were only for want of a great title and fortune, that I might be used like a lord by those who have an opinion of my parts; whether right or wrong is no great matter." Coarse, sceptical, and irreligious, he was arrogant where he dared to be, and cautious with his money, though having a reputation for charity. "If you were in a strait," asks Thackeray, "would you like such a benefactor? I think I would rather have had a potato and a friendly word from Goldsmith, than be beholden to the Dean for a guinea and a dinner." Heartlessly vibrating between Stella and Vanessa, to the misery and mortification of both, he finally married the former, only to separate from her at the church door. We are fain to abhor the man while we freely acknowledge the lustre of his genius, and to see only providential justice in his fate, when in the later years of his life, grown morose, misanthropic, and solitary, watched at all times by a keeper, his memory and other faculties failed him, and the great Dean became a picture of death in life. He made many enemies, and was bitterly criticised by his contemporaries, often not without ample justice. He has been stigmatized as "the apostate politician, the perjured lover, and the ribald priest,--a heart burning with hatred against the whole human race, a mind richly laden with images from the gutter and the lazar-house."

At complete antipodes to this portrait is that of Richard Steele, the popular dramatist, essayist, and editor; the friend of Addison, and one of the wittiest and most popular men of his day. His also was an erratic career, alternating between vice and virtue; or, as he says of himself, always sinning and repenting, until he finally outlived his relish for society, his income, and his health. "He was the best-natured creature in the world," says Young; "even in his worst state of health he seemed to desire nothing but to please and be pleased." Worn out and forgotten by his contemporaries, Steele retired into the country and left posterity to appreciate his genius. With a warm heart overflowing with love of wife and children, his checkered life was yet full of faults and careless blunders, many of which were directly traceable to strong drink. Little learned in books, but with a large knowledge of men and the world, he wrote with captivating simplicity and in the most colloquial style. Social and kindly in the extreme, his whole character is in strong contrast with the harshness of Swift and the dignified loneliness of Addison. Somehow we forget about the sword of Damocles, and ignore Nemesis altogether in connection with the name of Steele; and while we do not forget his weaknesses, we recollect more readily his loving nature, his appreciation of beauty and goodness, and his warm sympathy and kindness of heart. It was Steele who said of a noble lady of his time, that to love her was a liberal education.

Dr. Johnson spent much of his early life in penury, wandering in the streets, sometimes all night, without the means to pay for a lodging. A garret was a luxury to him in those days. Alas! what a satire upon learning and authorship! Notwithstanding his powerful intellect, he was subject to such a singular and even superstitious dread of death, that he could hardly be persuaded to execute his will in later years. When Garrick showed Johnson his fine house and grounds at Hampton Court, the mind of the great lexicographer reverted to his special weakness, saying, "Ah! David, David, these are the things which make a death-bed terrible." When he and Garrick both became famous, they used to chaff each other about who came to London with two shillings, and who had two-and-sixpence. Johnson was a confirmed hypochondriac; hence the gloom and morbid irritability of his disposition. His disorder entailed upon him perpetual fretfulness and mental despondency. Had it not been for the wonderful vigor of his mind,--as in the case of Cowper, who was similarly affected,--he would have been the inmate of a mad-house. Macaulay says of Johnson grown old: "In the fulness of his fame, and in the enjoyment of a competent fortune, he is better known to us than any other man in history. Everything about him, his coat, his wig, his figure, his face, his scrofula, his St. Vitus's dance, his rolling walk, his blinking eye, the outward signs which too clearly marked his approbation of his dinner, his insatiable appetite for fish-sauce and veal-pie with plums, his inextinguishable thirst for tea, his trick of touching the posts as he walked, his mysterious practice of treasuring up scraps of orange-peel, his morning slumbers, his midnight disputations, his contortions, his mutterings, his gruntings, his puffings, his vigorous, acute, and ready eloquence, his sarcastic wit, his vehemence, his indolence, his fits of tempestuous rage, his queer inmates, old Mr. Levitt and blind Mrs. Williams, the cat Hodge and the negro Frank,--are all as familiar to us as the objects by which we have been surrounded from childhood."

The greatest talents are usually coupled with the most acute sensibility. Rousseau imagined a phantom ever by his side; Luther had his demon, who frequented his study at all hours. So realistic was the great reformer's imagination, that he was accustomed to throw at the intruder any article nearest at hand. The confusion thus caused may easily be conceived when on one such occasion he cast his inkstand, with its contents, at the supposed demon. Cowper's weird and fatal messenger will also be remembered. Tasso's spirits glided in the air, and Mozart's "man in black" induced him to write his own requiem. But Johnson saw omens in the most trifling circumstances. If he chanced, in passing out of the house, to place his left foot foremost, he would return and start with the right, as promising immunity from accident and a safe return. Strange as it may seem, this eminent and profound man put faith in a long list of equally ridiculous omens in every-day life. He was a most voluminous and versatile writer, and excelled in delineating female characters; though Burke did say "all the ladies of his dramatis personae were Johnsons in petticoats." Few persons with means so limited as his ever spent more for charitable purposes; and if his disposition was irritable, his heart was kind. "He loved the poor," says Mrs. Thrale, "as I never yet saw any one else love them. He nursed whole nests of people in his house, where the lame, the blind, the sick, and the sorrowful found a sure retreat." Now and then, throughout Johnson's life, we get a glimpse that shows us the man, not as the world at large knew him, but as his unmasked heart appeared. Does the reader recall the incident of his kneeling by the dying bed of an aged woman, and giving her a pious kiss, afterwards recording, "We parted firmly, hoping to meet again"?

Melancholy has been the very demon of genius, the skeleton in the closet of poets and philosophers. Burton composed his "Anatomy of Melancholy" to divert his own depressed spirits. Cowper is another example. He says of himself, "I was struck with such a dejection of spirits as none but they who have felt the same can have the least conception of." He was tenderly attached, it will be remembered, to his cousin Theodora, who returned his love; but disappointment was the lot of both, as her parents, doubtless for good reasons, forbade the union. While the vastly humorous and popular ballad of "John Gilpin" was delighting the Londoners, and was being read to crowded audiences at high prices, the poor unhappy author was confined as a lunatic, and, to use his own words, was "encompassed by the midnight of absolute despair." The poet, like the clown in the ring, when he appears before the public must be all smiles and jests, though concealing perhaps an agony of physical or mental suffering. We know little of the real aspect which the face of Harlequin presents beneath his mask. Be sure he has his sorrows, deep and dark, in spite of the grinning features which he wears. Who does not recall the words which Thackeray makes his old and faithful gold pen utter:--

"I've help'd him to pen many a line for bread; To joke, with sorrow aching in his head; And make your laughter when his own heart bled."

Was there ever pleasanter or more genial reading than "Cowper's Familiar Letters," full to the brim with sparkling humor? Yet these were coined from his brain while in a state of hopeless dejection. "I wonder," he writes to Mr. Newton, "that a sportive thought should ever knock at the door of my intellect, and still more that it should gain admittance. It is as if Harlequin should introduce himself into the gloomy chamber where a corpse is deposited in state." He was one of the most amiable and gifted, but also one of the unhappiest, of the children of genius.

Christopher Smart, poet, scholar, and prose writer, was an eccentric individual, but of such undoubted ability as to challenge the admiration and win the friendship of Dr. Johnson, who wrote his biography. His habits finally became very bad, so that, delirium setting in, it was found necessary to confine him in an asylum. While there he wrote a very remarkable religious poem entitled the "Song of David," produced in his rational moments, which exhibited sublimity and power, and is still considered one of the curiosities of English literature. Smart improved in health and was discharged with his full reason restored, but was soon after committed to the King's Bench prison for debt; and there he died, poverty-stricken and neglected, in 1770. Samuel Boyle was a contemporary of Smart, and was possessed of equal genius whether with the pen or the bottle. Poor fellow! he got an indifferent living as a fag author, though he was capable of fine literary work. His poem entitled the "Deity" fully proved this. Ogle, the London publisher, used to employ Boyle to translate some of Chaucer's tales into modern English, which he did with much excellence and spirit, and for which he received threepence per printed line. The poor genius sank lower and lower, lived in a miserable garret, wearing a blanket about his shoulders, having no vest or coat, and was at last found famished to death with a pen in his hand. "Hunger and nakedness," says Carlyle, "perils and revilings, the prison, the cross, the poison-chalice, have in most times and countries been the market price the world has offered for wisdom, the welcome with which it has greeted those who have come to enlighten and purify it. Homer and Socrates and the Christian apostles belong to old days; but the world's Martyrology was not completed with them."

Richard Payne Knight, the Greek scholar and antiquary, was a remarkable genius in his way. His gift of ancient coins, bronzes, and works of art presented to the British Museum was valued at fifty thousand pounds. He was a poet of more than ordinary ability, and wrote, among other prose works, "An Analytical Enquiry into the Principles of Taste." He was for a number of consecutive years a member of Parliament. He had singular attacks of melancholy, and finally developed such a loathing of life that he destroyed himself with poison.

George Combe, the English author, encountered a full share of the vicissitudes of genius. He was capable of much theoretical goodness, but was not practical in that respect. He wrote in his old age, "Few men have enjoyed more of the pleasures and brilliance of life than myself;" yet he died in the King's Bench, where he had taken refuge from his creditors, not leaving enough to pay the expenses of his funeral.

Many a child of genius has been compelled to prostitute godlike powers to repel the gnawings of hunger; as for instance Holzman, the sagacious Oriental scholar and professor of Greek, who sold his notes on Dion Cassius for a dinner. The record of this learned man's struggles with dire want form a pathetic chapter in literary history. He tells us himself that at the age of eighteen he studied to acquire glory, but at twenty-five he studied to get bread.

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 illustrious 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 associated 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 assured 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 ass may bray at a classic statue, an ass cannot create one. 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 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 analyze, 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." 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 who, like himself, rose from humble associations. 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. 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 Passions" 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, 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 adventitious 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 harassed 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.

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 companionship. "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 pronounced 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 Shelley 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. We can describe Shelley's character no better than by comparing it to his longest poem, the "Revolt of Islam," which abounds in passages of surpassing beauty, but which as a whole is deficient in connection and human interest. It is as erratic as his own life. 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 Shelley's genius are now justly admired. When, after his fatal accident, his body was washed on shore, 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" in a small social circle. Says one who was present, "Shelley 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" 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 laureateship was offered to Gray, but his sensitiveness led him to decline it.

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 passed 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, assumed 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 passion, being wholly without judgment or self-control, and in nearly every respect disqualified for performing a parent's duty. 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 passionate genius; and therein lay his remarkable power, for man is at his greatest when stimulated by the passions. 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 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 passed, 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 assumed 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. What a significant fact it is that Lamb was so tenderly regarded by the galaxy of notable men with whom he associated! He was a schoolmate of Coleridge and intimate with him for fifty years. Southey, Hazlitt, Wordsworth, Godwin, 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: "God 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!

Wordsworth--to whom we have already alluded more than once--was at times distressingly poor, and in such straitened circumstances 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!"

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