CHAPTER II

Supposed irritability of men of genius brought to the test of

facts--Causes and occasions of the charge--Its injustice.

I have often thought, that it would be neither uninstructive nor

unamusing to analyze, and bring forward into distinct consciousness,

that complex feeling, with which readers in general take part against

the author, in favour of the critic; and the readiness with which they

apply to all poets the old sarcasm of Horace upon the scribblers of his

time

------genus irritabile vatum.

A debility and dimness of the imaginative power, and a consequent

necessity of reliance on the immediate impressions of the senses, do, we

know well, render the mind liable to superstition and fanaticism. Having

a deficient portion of internal and proper warmth, minds of this class

seek in the crowd circum fana for a warmth in common, which they do not

possess singly. Cold and phlegmatic in their own nature, like damp

hay, they heat and inflame by co-acervation; or like bees they become

restless and irritable through the increased temperature of collected

multitudes. Hence the German word for fanaticism, (such at least was

its original import,) is derived from the swarming of bees, namely,

schwaermen, schwaermerey. The passion being in an inverse proportion to

the insight,--that the more vivid, as this the less distinct--anger is

the inevitable consequence. The absense of all foundation within their

own minds for that, which they yet believe both true and indispensable

to their safety and happiness, cannot but produce an uneasy state of

feeling, an involuntary sense of fear from which nature has no means

of rescuing herself but by anger. Experience informs us that the first

defence of weak minds is to recriminate.

There’s no philosopher but sees,

That rage and fear are one disease;

Tho’ that may burn, and this may freeze,

They’re both alike the ague.

But where the ideas are vivid, and there exists an endless power of

combining and modifying them, the feelings and affections blend more

easily and intimately with these ideal creations than with the objects

of the senses; the mind is affected by thoughts, rather than by things;

and only then feels the requisite interest even for the most important

events and accidents, when by means of meditation they have passed into

thoughts. The sanity of the mind is between superstition with fanaticism

on the one hand, and enthusiasm with indifference and a diseased

slowness to action on the other. For the conceptions of the mind may be

so vivid and adequate, as to preclude that impulse to the realizing of

them, which is strongest and most restless in those, who possess more

than mere talent, (or the faculty of appropriating and applying the

knowledge of others,)--yet still want something of the creative and

self-sufficing power of absolute genius. For this reason therefore,

they are men of commanding genius. While the former rest content between

thought and reality, as it were in an intermundium of which their

own living spirit supplies the substance, and their imagination the

ever-varying form; the latter must impress their preconceptions on the

world without, in order to present them back to their own view with the

satisfying degree of clearness, distinctness, and individuality. These

in tranquil times are formed to exhibit a perfect poem in palace, or

temple, or landscape-garden; or a tale of romance in canals that join

sea with sea, or in walls of rock, which, shouldering back the billows,

imitate the power, and supply the benevolence of nature to sheltered

navies; or in aqueducts that, arching the wide vale from mountain to

mountain, give a Palmyra to the desert. But alas! in times of tumult

they are the men destined to come forth as the shaping spirit of ruin,

to destroy the wisdom of ages in order to substitute the fancies of a

day, and to change kings and kingdoms, as the wind shifts and shapes the

clouds [8]. The records of biography seem to confirm this theory. The

men of the greatest genius, as far as we can judge from their own works

or from the accounts of their contemporaries, appear to have been of

calm and tranquil temper in all that related to themselves. In the

inward assurance of permanent fame, they seem to have been either

indifferent or resigned with regard to immediate reputation. Through all

the works of Chaucer there reigns a cheerfulness, a manly hilarity which

makes it almost impossible to doubt a correspondent habit of feeling in

the author himself. Shakespeare’s evenness and sweetness of temper were

almost proverbial in his own age. That this did not arise from ignorance

of his own comparative greatness, we have abundant proof in his Sonnets,

which could scarcely have been known to Pope [9], when he asserted, that

our great bard--

------grew immortal in his own despite.

(Epist. to Augustus.)

Speaking of one whom he had celebrated, and contrasting the duration of

his works with that of his personal existence, Shakespeare adds:

Your name from hence immortal life shall have,

Tho’ I once gone to all the world must die;

The earth can yield me but a common grave,

When you entombed in men’s eyes shall lie.

Your monument shall be my gentle verse,

Which eyes not yet created shall o’er-read;

And tongues to be your being shall rehearse,

When all the breathers of this world are dead:

You still shall live, such virtue hath my pen,

Where breath most breathes, e’en in the mouth of men.

SONNET LXXXI.

I have taken the first that occurred; but Shakespeare’s readiness to

praise his rivals, ore pleno, and the confidence of his own equality

with those whom he deemed most worthy of his praise, are alike

manifested in another Sonnet.

Was it the proud full sail of his great verse,

Bound for the praise of all-too-precious you,

That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse,

Making their tomb, the womb wherein they grew?

Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write

Above a mortal pitch that struck me dead?

No, neither he, nor his compeers by night

Giving him aid, my verse astonished.

He, nor that affable familiar ghost,

Which nightly gulls him with intelligence,

As victors of my silence cannot boast;

I was not sick of any fear from thence!

But when your countenance fill’d up his line,

Then lack’d I matter, that enfeebled mine.

S. LXXXVI.

In Spenser, indeed, we trace a mind constitutionally tender, delicate,

and, in comparison with his three great compeers, I had almost said,

effeminate; and this additionally saddened by the unjust persecution of

Burleigh, and the severe calamities, which overwhelmed his latter days.

These causes have diffused over all his compositions “a melancholy

grace,” and have drawn forth occasional strains, the more pathetic

from their gentleness. But no where do we find the least trace of

irritability, and still less of quarrelsome or affected contempt of his

censurers.

The same calmness, and even greater self-possession, may be affirmed

of Milton, as far as his poems, and poetic character are concerned.

He reserved his anger for the enemies of religion, freedom, and his

country. My mind is not capable of forming a more august conception,

than arises from the contemplation of this great man in his latter

days;--poor, sick, old, blind, slandered, persecuted,--

Darkness before, and danger’s voice behind,--

in an age in which he was as little understood by the party, for whom,

as by that against whom, he had contended; and among men before whom he

strode so far as to dwarf himself by the distance; yet still listening

to the music of his own thoughts, or if additionally cheered,

yet cheered only by the prophetic faith of two or three solitary

individuals, he did nevertheless

------argue not

Against Heaven’s hand or will, nor bate a jot

Of heart or hope; but still bore up and steer’d

Right onward.

From others only do we derive our knowledge that Milton, in his latter

day, had his scorners and detractors; and even in his day of youth and

hope, that he had enemies would have been unknown to us, had they not

been likewise the enemies of his country.

I am well aware, that in advanced stages of literature, when there exist

many and excellent models, a high degree of talent, combined with taste

and judgment, and employed in works of imagination, will acquire for

a man the name of a great genius; though even that analogon of genius,

which, in certain states of society, may even render his writings more

popular than the absolute reality could have done, would be sought

for in vain in the mind and temper of the author himself. Yet even in

instances of this kind, a close examination will often detect, that the

irritability, which has been attributed to the author’s genius as its

cause, did really originate in an ill conformation of body, obtuse pain,

or constitutional defect of pleasurable sensation. What is charged to

the author, belongs to the man, who would probably have been still more

impatient, but for the humanizing influences of the very pursuit, which

yet bears the blame of his irritability.

How then are we to explain the easy credence generally given to this

charge, if the charge itself be not, as I have endeavoured to show,

supported by experience? This seems to me of no very difficult solution.

In whatever country literature is widely diffused, there will be many

who mistake an intense desire to possess the reputation of poetic

genius, for the actual powers, and original tendencies which constitute

it. But men, whose dearest wishes are fixed on objects wholly out of

their own power, become in all cases more or less impatient and prone to

anger. Besides, though it may be paradoxical to assert, that a man can

know one thing and believe the opposite, yet assuredly a vain person may

have so habitually indulged the wish, and persevered in the attempt, to

appear what he is not, as to become himself one of his own proselytes.

Still, as this counterfeit and artificial persuasion must differ, even

in the person’s own feelings, from a real sense of inward power, what

can be more natural, than that this difference should betray itself

in suspicious and jealous irritability? Even as the flowery sod, which

covers a hollow, may be often detected by its shaking and trembling.

But, alas! the multitude of books and the general diffusion of

literature, have produced other and more lamentable effects in the world

of letters, and such as are abundant to explain, though by no means to

justify, the contempt with which the best grounded complaints of injured

genius are rejected as frivolous, or entertained as matter of merriment.

In the days of Chaucer and Gower, our language might (with due allowance

for the imperfections of a simile) be compared to a wilderness of vocal

reeds, from which the favourites only of Pan or Apollo could construct

even the rude syrinx; and from this the constructors alone could elicit

strains of music. But now, partly by the labours of successive

poets, and in part by the more artificial state of society and social

intercourse, language, mechanized as it were into a barrel-organ,

supplies at once both instrument and tune. Thus even the deaf may play,

so as to delight the many. Sometimes (for it is with similes, as it

is with jests at a wine table, one is sure to suggest another) I have

attempted to illustrate the present state of our language, in its

relation to literature, by a press-room of larger and smaller stereotype

pieces, which, in the present Anglo-Gallican fashion of unconnected,

epigrammatic periods, it requires but an ordinary portion of ingenuity

to vary indefinitely, and yet still produce something, which, if not

sense, will be so like it as to do as well. Perhaps better: for it

spares the reader the trouble of thinking; prevents vacancy, while

it indulges indolence; and secures the memory from all danger of an

intellectual plethora. Hence of all trades, literature at present

demands the least talent or information; and, of all modes of

literature, the manufacturing of poems. The difference indeed between

these and the works of genius is not less than between an egg and an

egg-shell; yet at a distance they both look alike.

Now it is no less remarkable than true, with how little examination

works of polite literature are commonly perused, not only by the mass of

readers, but by men of first rate ability, till some accident or chance

[10] discussion have roused their attention, and put them on their

guard. And hence individuals below mediocrity not less in natural power

than in acquired knowledge; nay, bunglers who have failed in the lowest

mechanic crafts, and whose presumption is in due proportion to their

want of sense and sensibility; men, who being first scribblers

from idleness and ignorance, next become libellers from envy and

malevolence,--have been able to drive a successful trade in the

employment of the booksellers, nay, have raised themselves into

temporary name and reputation with the public at large, by that most

powerful of all adulation, the appeal to the bad and malignant passions

of mankind [11]. But as it is the nature of scorn, envy, and all

malignant propensities to require a quick change of objects, such

writers are sure, sooner or later, to awake from their dream of vanity

to disappointment and neglect with embittered and envenomed feelings.

Even during their short-lived success, sensible in spite of themselves

on what a shifting foundation it rests, they resent the mere refusal

of praise as a robbery, and at the justest censures kindle at once into

violent and undisciplined abuse; till the acute disease changing into

chronical, the more deadly as the less violent, they become the fit

instruments of literary detraction and moral slander. They are then no

longer to be questioned without exposing the complainant to ridicule,

because, forsooth, they are anonymous critics, and authorized, in Andrew

Marvell’s phrase, as “synodical individuals” to speak of themselves

plurali majestatico! As if literature formed a caste, like that of

the Paras in Hindostan, who, however maltreated, must not dare to deem

themselves wronged! As if that, which in all other cases adds a deeper

dye to slander, the circumstance of its being anonymous, here acted

only to make the slanderer inviolable! [12] Thus, in part, from the

accidental tempers of individuals--(men of undoubted talent, but not

men of genius)--tempers rendered yet more irritable by their desire to

appear men of genius; but still more effectively by the excesses of the

mere counterfeits both of talent and genius; the number too being so

incomparably greater of those who are thought to be, than of those

who really are men of genius; and in part from the natural, but not

therefore the less partial and unjust distinction, made by the public

itself between literary and all other property; I believe the prejudice

to have arisen, which considers an unusual irascibility concerning the

reception of its products as characteristic of genius.

It might correct the moral feelings of a numerous class of readers, to

suppose a Review set on foot, the object of which should be to criticise

all the chief works presented to the public by our ribbon-weavers,

calico-printers, cabinet-makers, and china-manufacturers; which should

be conducted in the same spirit, and take the same freedom with personal

character, as our literary journals. They would scarcely, I think,

deny their belief, not only that the genus irritabile would be found

to include many other species besides that of bards; but that the

irritability of trade would soon reduce the resentments of poets into

mere shadow-fights in the comparison. Or is wealth the only rational

object of human interest? Or even if this were admitted, has the poet

no property in his works? Or is it a rare, or culpable case, that he

who serves at the altar of the Muses, should be compelled to derive

his maintenance from the altar, when too he has perhaps deliberately

abandoned the fairest prospects of rank and opulence in order to

devote himself, an entire and undistracted man, to the instruction or

refinement of his fellow-citizens? Or, should we pass by all higher

objects and motives, all disinterested benevolence, and even that

ambition of lasting praise which is at once the crutch and ornament,

which at once supports and betrays, the infirmity of human virtue,--is

the character and property of the man, who labours for our intellectual

pleasures, less entitled to a share of our fellow feeling, than that of

the wine-merchant or milliner? Sensibility indeed, both quick and deep,

is not only a characteristic feature, but may be deemed a component

part, of genius. But it is not less an essential mark of true genius,

that its sensibility is excited by any other cause more powerfully than

by its own personal interests; for this plain reason, that the man of

genius lives most in the ideal world, in which the present is still

constituted by the future or the past; and because his feelings have

been habitually associated with thoughts and images, to the number,

clearness, and vivacity of which the sensation of self is always in an

inverse proportion. And yet, should he perchance have occasion to repel

some false charge, or to rectify some erroneous censure, nothing is more

common than for the many to mistake the general liveliness of his manner

and language, whatever is the subject, for the effects of peculiar

irritation from its accidental relation to himself. [13]

For myself, if from my own feelings, or from the less suspicious test

of the observations of others, I had been made aware of any literary

testiness or jealousy; I trust, that I should have been, however,

neither silly nor arrogant enough to have burthened the imperfection on

genius. But an experience--(and I should not need documents in abundance

to prove my words, if I added)--a tried experience of twenty years, has

taught me, that the original sin of my character consists in a careless

indifference to public opinion, and to the attacks of those who

influence it; that praise and admiration have become yearly less and

less desirable, except as marks of sympathy; nay that it is difficult

and distressing to me to think with any interest even about the sale

and profit of my works, important as, in my present circumstances, such

considerations must needs be. Yet it never occurred to me to believe or

fancy, that the quantum of intellectual power bestowed on me by nature

or education was in any way connected with this habit of my feelings;

or that it needed any other parents or fosterers than constitutional

indolence, aggravated into languor by ill-health; the accumulating

embarrassments of procrastination; the mental cowardice, which is the

inseparable companion of procrastination, and which makes us anxious to

think and converse on any thing rather than on what concerns ourselves;

in fine, all those close vexations, whether chargeable on my faults

or my fortunes, which leave me but little grief to spare for evils

comparatively distant and alien.

Indignation at literary wrongs I leave to men born under happier stars.

I cannot afford it. But so far from condemning those who can, I deem

it a writer’s duty, and think it creditable to his heart, to feel and

express a resentment proportioned to the grossness of the provocation,

and the importance of the object. There is no profession on earth, which

requires an attention so early, so long, or so unintermitting as that of

poetry; and indeed as that of literary composition in general, if it be

such as at all satisfies the demands both of taste and of sound logic.

How difficult and delicate a task even the mere mechanism of verse is,

may be conjectured from the failure of those, who have attempted poetry

late in life. Where then a man has, from his earliest youth, devoted

his whole being to an object, which by the admission of all civilized

nations in all ages is honourable as a pursuit, and glorious as an

attainment; what of all that relates to himself and his family, if only

we except his moral character, can have fairer claims to his protection,

or more authorize acts of self-defence, than the elaborate products of

his intellect and intellectual industry? Prudence itself would command

us to show, even if defect or diversion of natural sensibility had

prevented us from feeling, a due interest and qualified anxiety for the

offspring and representatives of our nobler being. I know it, alas! by

woful experience. I have laid too many eggs in the hot sands of this

wilderness, the world, with ostrich carelessness and ostrich oblivion.

The greater part indeed have been trod under foot, and are forgotten;

but yet no small number have crept forth into life, some to furnish

feathers for the caps of others, and still more to plume the shafts in

the quivers of my enemies, of them that unprovoked have lain in wait

against my soul.

Sic vos, non vobis, mellificatis, apes!