Literary Character of Men of Genius. Disraeli Isaac
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understanding, but would speak ill of no one. This circumstance of the character in youth being entirely mistaken, or entirely opposite to the subsequent one of maturer life, has been noticed of many. Even a discerning parent or master has entirely failed to develope the genius of the youth, who has afterwards ranked among eminent men; we ought as little to decide from early unfavourable appearances, as from inequality of talent. The great ISAAC BARROW'S father used to say, that if it pleased God to take from him any of his children, he hoped it might be Isaac, as the least promising; and during the three years Barrow passed at the Charter-house, he was remarkable only for the utter negligence of his studies and of his person. The mother of SHERIDAN, herself a literary female, pronounced early that he was the dullest and most hopeless of her sons. BODMER, at the head of the literary class in Switzerland, who had so frequently discovered and animated the literary youths of his country, could never detect the latent genius of GESNER: after a repeated examination of the young man, he put his parents in despair with the hopeless award that a mind of so ordinary a cast must confine itself to mere writing and accompts. One fact, however, Bodmer had overlooked when he pronounced the fate of our poet and artist—the dull youth, who could not retain barren words, discovered an active fancy in the image of things. While at his grammar lessons, as it happened to Lucian, he was employing tedious hours in modelling in wax, groups of men, animals, and other figures, the rod of the pedagogue often interrupted the fingers of our infant moulder, who never ceased working to amuse his little sisters with his waxen creatures, which constituted all his happiness. Those arts of imitation were already possessing the soul of the boy Gesner, to which afterwards it became so entirely devoted.
[Footnote A: This is a remarkable expression from Goldsmith: but it is much more so when we hear it from Lord Byron. See a note in the following chapter, on "The First Studies," p. 56.]
Thus it happens that in the first years of life the education of the youth may not be the education of his genius; he lives unknown to himself and others. In all these cases nature had dropped the seeds in the soil: but even a happy disposition must be concealed amidst adverse circumstances: I repeat, that genius can only make that its own which is homogeneous with its nature. It has happened to some men of genius during a long period of their lives, that an unsettled impulse, unable to discover the object of its aptitude, a thirst and fever in the temperament of too sentient a being, which cannot find the occupation to which only it can attach itself, has sunk into a melancholy and querulous spirit, weary with the burthen of existence; but the instant the latent talent had declared itself, his first work, the eager offspring of desire and love, has astonished the world at once with the birth and the maturity of genius.
We are told that PELEGRINO TIBALDI, who afterwards obtained the glorious title of "the reformed Michael Angelo," long felt the strongest internal dissatisfaction at his own proficiency, and that one day, in melancholy and despair, he had retired from the city, resolved to starve himself to death: his friend discovered him, and having persuaded him to change his pursuits from painting to architecture, he soon rose to eminence. This story D'Argenville throws some doubt over; but as Tibaldi during twenty years abstained from his pencil, a singular circumstance seems explained by an extraordinary occurrence. TASSO, with feverish anxiety pondered on five different subjects before he could decide in the choice of his epic; the same embarrassment was long the fate of GIBBON on the subject of his history. Some have sunk into a deplorable state of utter languishment, from the circumstance of being deprived of the means of pursuing their beloved study, as in the case of the chemist BERGMAN. His friends, to gain him over to the more lucrative professions, deprived him of his books of natural history; a plan which nearly proved fatal to the youth, who with declining health quitted the university. At length ceasing to struggle with the conflicting desire within him, his renewed enthusiasm for his favourite science restored the health he had lost in abandoning it.
It was the view of the tomb of Virgil which so powerfully influenced the innate genius of BOCCACCIO, and fixed his instant decision. As yet young, and in the neighbourhood of Naples, wandering for recreation, he reached the tomb of the Mantuan. Pausing before it, his youthful mind began to meditate. Struck by the universal glory of that great name, he lamented his own fortune to be occupied by the obscure details of merchandise; already he sighed to emulate the fame of the Roman, and as Villani tells us, from that day he abandoned for ever the occupations of commerce, dedicating himself to literature. PROCTOR, the lost Phidias of our country, would often say, that he should never have quitted his mercantile situation, but for the accidental sight of Barry's picture of "Venus rising from the Sea;" a picture which produced so immediate an effect on his mind, that it determined him to quit a lucrative occupation. Surely we cannot account for such sudden effusions of the mind, and such instant decisions, but by the principle of that predisposition which only waits for an occasion to declare itself.
Abundant facts exhibit genius unequivocally discovering itself in youth. In general, perhaps, a master-mind exhibits precocity. "Whatever a young man at first applies himself to, is commonly his delight afterwards." This remark was made by HARTLEY, who has related an anecdote of the infancy of his genius, which indicated the manhood. He declared to his daughter that the intention of writing a book upon the nature of man, was conceived in his mind when he was a very little boy—when swinging backwards and forwards upon a gate, not more than nine or ten years old; he was then meditating upon the nature of his own mind, how man was made, and for what future end. Such was the true origin, in a boy of ten years old, of his celebrated book on "The Frame, the Duty, and the Expectation of Man." JOHN HUNTER conceived his notion of the principle of life, which to his last day formed the subject of his inquiries and experiments, when he was very young; for at that period of life, Mr. Abernethy tells us, he began his observations on the incubated egg, which suggested or corroborated his opinions.
A learned friend, and an observer of men of science, has supplied me with a remark highly deserving notice. It is an observation that will generally hold good, that the most important systems of theory, however late they may be published, have been formed at a very early period of life. This important observation may be verified by some striking facts. A most curious one will be found in Lord BACON'S letter to Father Fulgentio, where he gives an account of his projecting his philosophy thirty years before, during his youth. MILTON from early youth mused on the composition of an epic. DE THOU has himself told us, that from his tender youth his mind was full of the idea of composing a history of his own times; and his whole life was passed in preparation, and in a continued accession of materials for a future period. From the age of twenty, MONTESQUIEU was preparing the materials of L'Esprit des Loix, by extracts from the immense volumes of civil law. TILLEMONT'S vast labours were traced out in his mind at the early age of nineteen, on reading Baronius; and some of the finest passages in RACINE'S tragedies were composed while a pupil, wandering in the woods of the Port-Royal. So true is it that the seeds of many of our great literary and scientific works were lying, for many years antecedent to their being given to the world, in a latent state of germination.[A]
[Footnote A: I need not to be reminded, that I am not worth mentioning among the illustrious men who have long formed the familiar subjects of my delightful researches. But with the middling as well as with the great, the same habits must operate. Early in life, I was struck by the inductive philosophy of Bacon, and sought after a Moral Experimental Philosophy; and I had then in my mind an observation of Lord Bolingbroke's, for I see I quoted it thirty years ago, that "Abstract or general propositions, though never so true, appear obscure or doubtful to us very often till they are explained by examples." So far back as in 1793 I published "A Dissertation on Anecdotes," with the simplicity of a young votary; there I deduced results, and threw out a magnificent project not very practicable. From that time to the hour I am now writing, my metal has been running in this mould, and I still keep casting philosophy into anecdotes, and anecdotes into philosophy. As I began I fear I shall end.]
The predisposition of genius has declared itself in painters and poets, who were such before they understood the nature of colours and the arts of verse; and this vehement propensity, so mysteriously constitutional, may be traced in other intellectual characters besides those which belong to the class of imagination. It was said that PITT was born a minister; the late Dr. SHAW I always considered as one born a naturalist, and I know a great literary antiquary who seems to me to have been also born such; for the passion of curiosity is as intense a faculty, or instinct,