GENIUS
IN
SUNSHINE AND SHADOW
By the Same Author
EDGE-TOOLS OF SPEECH.
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GENIUS
IN SUNSHINE AND SHADOW
BY
MATURIN M. BALLOU
AUTHOR OF "EDGE-TOOLS OF SPEECH," ETC.
'Tis in books the chief
Of all perfection to be plain and brief.
Butler
BOSTON
TICKNOR AND COMPANY
1887
Copyright, 1886,
By Maturin M. Ballou.
All rights reserved.
University Press:
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge.
PREFACE.
The volume in hand might perhaps better have been entitled "Library Notes," as the pages are literally the gathered notes of the author's library-hours. The reader will kindly peruse these pages remembering that they assume only to be the gossip, as it were, of the author with himself,—notes which have grown to these proportions by casual accumulation in the course of other studies, and without consecutive purpose. That these notes thus made have been put into printed form, is owing to the publisher's chance knowledge and hearty approval of them. These few lines are by way, not of apology,—no sensible person ever made an apology, according to Mr. Emerson,—but of introduction; so that the reader may not fancy he is to encounter a labored essay upon the theme suggested by the title of the volume.
These pages may not be without a certain wholesome influence, if, fortunately, they shall incite others to analyze the character of genius as exhibited by the masters of art and literature. The facts alluded to, though familiar to many, are not so to all; wherefore the volume may indirectly promote the knowledge of both history and biography, at the same time leading the thoughtful reader to seek further and more ample information concerning those individuals who are here so briefly introduced.
M. M. B.
GENIUS
IN SUNSHINE AND SHADOW.
CHAPTER I.
The ever-flowing tide of time rapidly obliterates the footprints of those whom the world has delighted to honor. While it has caused heroic names, like their possessors, to lapse into oblivion, it has also shrouded many a historical page with the softened veil of distance, like ivy-grown towers, rendering what was once terrible now only picturesque. In glancing back through thousands of years, and permitting the mind to rest on the earliest recorded epochs, one is apt to forget how much human life then, in all its fundamental characteristics, was like our own daily experience. There never was a golden age; that is yet to come. The most assiduous antiquarian has only corroborated the fact that human nature is unchanged. Conventionalities, manners and customs, the fashions, may change, but human nature does not. As an example of the mutability of fame, we have only to ask ourselves what is actually known to-day of Homer,[1] Aristophanes, and their renowned contemporaries, or even of our more familiar Shakespeare?[2] Of the existence of the first named we have evidence in his two great epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey; but, though deemed the most famous poet that ever lived, we do not even know his birthplace.
"Ten ancient towns contend for Homer dead,
Through which the living Homer begged his bread."
The cautious historian only tells us that he is supposed to have flourished about nine hundred years before the time of Christ; while there are also learned writers who contend that no such person as Homer[3] ever lived, and who attribute the two most famous poems of antiquity to various minstrels or ballad-mongers, who celebrated the "tale of Troy divine" at various periods, and whose songs and legends were fused into unity at the time of Pisistratus.
Over the personality of Aristophanes,[4] the great comic poet of Greece, who is supposed to have flourished some five or six hundred years later than Homer, there rests the same cloud of obscurity, and he is clearly identified only by eleven authentic comedies which are still extant, though he is believed to have written fifty. Of Shakespeare, born some two thousand years later (1564), how little is actually known beyond the fact of his birthplace! Even the authorship of his plays, like that of Homer's poems, is a subject of dispute. Perhaps, however, this loss of individuality but adds to the influence of the poet's divine mission. The really great men of history, benefactors of their race, are those who still live in the undying thoughts which they have left behind them.
In this familiar gossip we propose to glance briefly at such names as may suggest themselves, without observing any strict system of classification. The theme is so fruitful, the pages of history so teem with portraits which stand forth in groups to attract the eye, that one hardly knows where to begin, what matter to exclude, what to adduce; and therefore, closing the elaborate records of the past, we will trust to momentary inspiration and the ready promptings of memory.
The first thought which strikes us in this connection is, that the origin of those whom the world has called great—men who have written their names indelibly upon the pages of history—is often of the humblest character. Such men have most frequently risen from the ranks. In fact, genius ignores all social barriers and springs forth wherever heaven has dropped the seed. The grandest characters known in art, literature, and the useful inventions have illustrated the axiom that "brave deeds are the ancestors of brave men;" and it would almost appear that an element of hardship is necessary to the effective development of true genius. Indeed, when we come to the highest achievements of the greatest minds, it seems that they were not limited by race, condition of life, or the circumstances of their age. "It is," says Emerson, "the nature of poetry to spring, like the rainbow daughter of Wonder, from the Invisible, to abolish the past and refuse all history." But this of course refers only to poetry in its loftiest and noblest conceptions and sentiments; and then only in passages of a great work.
Æsop, the fabulist, who flourished six hundred years before Christ, and whose fables are as familiar to us after the lapse of twenty-five hundred years as household words; Publius Syrus,[5] the eminent moralist, who lived in the time of Julius CÆsar, and whose wise axioms are to be found in every library; Terence,[6] the Carthaginian poet and dramatist; Epictetus, the stoic philosopher,—all were slaves in early life,[7] but won freedom and lasting fame by force of their native genius. No man is nobler than another unless he is born with better abilities, a more amiable disposition, and a larger heart and brain. The field is open to all; for it is fixedness of purpose and perseverance that win the prizes of this world,—qualities that can be exercised by the most humble.
Protagoras, the Greek sophist and orator, was in his youth a street porter of Athens, carrying loads upon his back like a beast of burden. He was a singularly independent genius, and was expelled from his native city because he openly doubted the existence of the gods. His countryman, Cleanthes the stoic, was also "a hewer of stone and drawer of water," but rose among the Athenians to be esteemed as a rival of the great philosopher Zeno. He wrote many works in his day,—about three hundred years before the Christian Era,—none of which have been preserved except a hymn to Jupiter, which is remarkable for purity of thought and elevation of sentiment.
We need not confine ourselves, however, to so remote a period to illustrate that genius is independent of circumstances. In our random treatment of the subject there occurs to us the name of Bandoccin, one of the most learned men of the sixteenth century, who was the son of an itinerant shoemaker, and who was himself brought up to the trade. Gelli, the prolific Italian author, and president of the Florentine Academy, was a tailor by trade, and of very humble birth. His moral dialogues entitled, I Capricci del Bottajo ("The Whims of the Cooper"), have been pronounced by competent critics to be extraordinary for originality and piquancy, while all his works are remarkable for purity of diction. Canova, the sculptor of world-wide fame, was the son of a day-laborer in the marble quarries. Opie, the distinguished English painter, earned his bread at the carpenter's trade until his majority, but before his death became professor of painting in the Royal Academy. Amyot, the brilliant scholar, and professor of Greek, Hebrew, and Latin, who is ranked among those who have contributed most towards the perfection of the French language, learned to write upon birch-bark with charcoal, while he lived on a loaf of bread per day. This man rose to be grand almoner of France, and proved that courage, perseverance, and genius need no ancestors.[8]
Akenside, the English didactic poet, wit, essayist, and physician, author of the "Pleasures of the Imagination," was a butcher's boy. His developed genius caused him to be appointed to the Queen's household. Sir Humphry Davy was an apothecary's apprentice in his youth. Matthew Prior, the English poet and diplomatist, began life as a charity scholar. Rollin, famous for his "Ancient History," was the son of a poor Parisian cutler, and began life at an iron-forge. James Barry, the eminent historical painter, was in his minority a foremast hand on board an Irish coasting-vessel. D'Alembert, the remarkable French mathematician, author, and academician, was at birth a poor foundling in the streets of Paris, though it must be added that he was the illegitimate and discarded son of Madame de Tencin, one of the wickedest, most profligate, most cynical, and ablest of the high-placed women of France. D'Alembert scorned her[9] proffered help when she, learning that he was the offspring of one of her desultory amours, attempted to assist him by her money and patronage. He lived austerely poor, and his love was lavished, not on his natural, or rather unnatural, mother, but on the indigent woman who had picked him up in the street, and who by self-denial had enabled him to obtain sustenance and education. As soon as he was old enough to realize his true situation, he said, "I have no name, but with God's help I will make one!" The time came when Catherine II. of Russia offered him one hundred thousand francs per annum to become the educator of her son, which he declined.
BÉranger, the lyric poet of France, whose effectiveness and purity of style defy criticism, was at one time a barefooted orphan on the boulevards of the great city. His verses, bold, patriotic, and satirical, were in every mouth among the masses of his countrymen, contributing more than any other cause to produce the revolution of 1830.[10] He had the noble independence to refuse all official recognition under government. Rachel, it will be remembered, was in her childhood a street-ballad singer. A resident of the French capital once pointed out to the writer a spot on the Champs ÉlysÉes where at the age of twelve, so pale as to seem scarcely more than a shadow, she used to appear daily, accompanied by her brother. A rude cloth was spread on the ground, upon which she stood and recited tragic scenes from Corneille and Racine, or sang patriotic songs for pennies, accompanied upon the violin by her brother.
Her attitudes, gestures, and voice always captivated a crowd of people. Rachel was a Jewish pedler's daughter, though she was born in Switzerland; and in these youthful days she wore a Swiss costume upon the boulevards.[11]
Boccaccio, the most famous of Italian novelists, was the illegitimate son of a Florentine tradesman, and began life as a merchant's clerk. It is well known that Shakespeare borrowed the plot of "All's Well that Ends Well" from Boccaccio.[12] In fact, the "Decamerone" furnished him with plots for several of his plays. Chaucer derived from the same source his poem of the "Knight's Tale." We never hear shallow people reflecting upon the Bard of Avon for taking some of his plots from earlier writers, and weaving about them the golden threads of his superb genius, without recalling Dryden's remark relative to Ben Jonson's adaptations and translations from the classics, in such plays as "Catiline" and "Sejanus." "He invades authors," says Dryden, "like a monarch; and what would be theft in other writers is but victory in him." Sterne's idea upon the same subject also suggests itself. "As monarchs have a right," he says, "to call in the specie of a State and raise its value by their own impression, so are there certain prerogative geniuses who are above plagiaries, who cannot be said to steal, but from their improvement of a thought, rather to borrow it, and repay the commonwealth of letters with interest again, and may more properly be said to adopt than to kidnap a sentiment, by leaving it heir to their own fame."
Columbus, who gave a new world to the old, was a weaver's son, and in his youth he earned his bread as a cabin-boy in a coasting-vessel which sailed from Genoa. The story of the great Genoese pilot possesses a more thrilling interest than any narrative which the imagination of poet or romancer has ever conceived. His name flashes a bright ray over the mental darkness of the period in which he lived. In imagination one sees him wandering for years from court to court, begging the necessary means wherewith to prosecute his inspired purpose,[13] and finally, after successfully accomplishing his mission, languishing in chains and in prison.
How naturally Halleck's invocation to Death, in "Marco Bozarris," occurs to us here, as the hero, when his object has been attained, joyfully faces the grim monarch:
"Thy grasp is welcome as the hand
Of brother in a foreign land;
Thy summons welcome as the cry
That told the Indian isles were nigh,
To the world-seeking Genoese,
When the land wind from woods of palm
And orange-groves and fields of balm
Blew o'er the Haytian seas."
De Foe, the author of "Robinson Crusoe," and of over two hundred other books, was a hosier by trade, the son of a London butcher named James Foe. The particle De was added by the son without other authority than the suggestion of his own fancy. Cardinal Wolsey and Kirke White were also sons of butchers.
Claude Lorraine, the glorious colorist, whose very name has become a synonym in art, was in youth employed as a pastry-cook. MoliÈre, the great French dramatist and actor, who presents one of the most remarkable instances of literary success known to history, was the son of a tapestry-maker, and was himself at one time apprenticed to a tailor, and afterwards became a valet-de-chambre. When MoliÈre was valet to Louis XIII., he had already appeared upon the stage, and was rather sneered at by the other members of the king's household. The generous monarch observed this, and determined to put a stop to it: "I am told you have short commons here, MoliÈre, and some of my people decline to serve you," said Louis, as he rose from his breakfast one day. "Sit down here at my table. I warrant you are hungry." And the king cut him a portion of chicken and put it upon his plate just at the moment when a distinguished member of the royal household entered. "You see me," said the king, "giving MoliÈre his breakfast, as some of my people do not think him good enough company for themselves." From that hour the royal valet was treated with due consideration. William Cobbett, the English author and vigorous political writer, was a poor farmer's boy and entirely self-educated. Izaak Walton, the delightful biographist and miscellaneous author, whose "Complete Angler" would make any man's name justly famous, was for years a linen-draper in London. Pope and Southey were the sons of linen-drapers.
How rapidly instances of the triumphs of genius over circumstances multiply upon us when the mind is permitted to roam at will through the long vista of the past! Cervantes, the Spanish Shakespeare, whose "Don Quixote" is as much a classic[14] as "Hamlet," was a common foot-soldier in the army of Castile. In 1575 he was captured by an Algerine corsair and carried as a slave to Algiers, where he endured the most terrible sufferings. He was finally ransomed and returned to Spain. Alexandre Dumas's grandmother was an African slave. Hugh Miller, author, editor, poet, distinguished naturalist, whose clear, choice Saxon-English caused the Edinburgh "Review" to ask, "Where could this man have acquired his style?" was a stone-mason, and his only college was a stone-quarry.[15]
Keats, the sweetest of English poets, whose delicacy of fancy and beauty of versification are "a joy forever," was born in a stable. Oliver Cromwell, one of the most extraordinary men in English history, famous as a citizen, great as a general, and greatest as a ruler, was the son of a malt-brewer. Howard, the philanthropist and author, whose name stands a monument of Christian fame, was at first a grocer's boy. Rossini, one of the greatest of modern composers, was the son of an itinerant musician and a strolling actress. Andrea del Sarto was the son of a tailor, and took his name from his father's trade. Perino del Vaga was born in poverty and nearly starved in his boyhood. Perugino, whose noble painting of the "Infant Christ and the Virgin" adorns the Albani Palace at Rome, grew up in want and misery. We all remember the story of the shepherd-boy Giotto, who finally came to be so eminent a painter, and the intimate friend of Dante; like Michael Angelo, he was an architect and sculptor. Paganini, one of the greatest of instrumental performers that ever lived, was born in poverty and was illegitimate. He gained enormous sums of money by his wonderful exhibitions and musical compositions, but was spoiled by adulation, becoming reckless and dissipated. His performances in the cities of Europe created a furore before unparalleled in the history of music, and never since surpassed.
Wilson the unequalled ornithologist, Dr. Livingstone the heroic missionary and African traveller, and Tannahill[16] the Scottish poet,—author of that familiar and favorite song, "Jessie, the Flower of Dumblane,"—earned their living in youth as journeymen weavers. Joost van den Vondel, the national poet of Holland, was a hosier's apprentice. MoliÈre, already referred to, began his career as a journeyman tailor, but occasionally his maternal grandfather took him to the play, and thus were sown the seeds which led to his greatness as a dramatic author and actor. Samuel Woodworth, author of the "Old Oaken Bucket," one of the sweetest lyrics in our language, was a journeyman printer. Richard Cobden, statesman, economist, and author, was a poor Sussex farmer's son, whose youthful occupation was that of tending sheep. John Bright, the intimate friend and coadjutor of Cobden, one of the greatest, most eloquent, and most successful of English reformers, was the son of a cotton-spinner. Lord Clyde, the successful general who crushed the rebellion in India, and who was made a peer of England, was the son of a carpenter. The motto of his life, always inscribed upon the fly-leaf of his pocket memorandum-book, was: "By means of patience, common-sense, and time, impossibilities become possible."
John Bunyan,[17] the author of "Pilgrim's Progress," the solace and delight of millions, and a text-book for all future time, was a tinker. His great work is said to have obtained a larger circulation than any other English book except the translation of the Bible. Benjamin Franklin, statesman, philosopher, epigrammatist, was a tallow-chandler.[18] Nathaniel Bowditch, the eminent mathematician, was a cooper's apprentice. He was twenty-one years of age before he may be said to have begun his education, but in his prime was a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, and was offered the chair of mathematics in Harvard College. Hiram Powers, the first sculptor from this country to win European fame, was brought up a ploughboy on a Vermont farm; his "Greek Slave" gave him high rank among modern sculptors. Elihu Burritt, the remarkable linguist, was a Connecticut horse-shoer. Whitefield, the eloquent English preacher and father of the sect of Calvinistic Methodists, was in youth the stable-boy of an English inn. Cardinal Wolsey, chief minister of Henry VIII., was brought up to follow his father's humble calling of a butcher. Horne Tooke, the English wit, priest, lawyer, and genius, was the son of a poulterer.[19] Correra, afterwards president of Guatemala, was born in poverty, and for years was a drummer-boy in the army, where he was laughed at for saying that the world should some day hear from him, being reminded that his present business was to make a noise in the world. But he meant what he said, and acted under Lord Clyde's motto. He rose by degrees to the highest position in the gift of his countrymen. "To the persevering mortal the blessed immortals are swift," says Zoroaster.
Ebenezer Elliott, the English "Corn-Law Rhymer,"[20] was a blacksmith, but a poet by nature, and his songs created a political revolution in his native land, though unlike BÉranger's, in France, it was a peaceful revolution. He was ever a true champion of the poor and oppressed. In the latter portion of his life he was in easy pecuniary circumstances. William Lloyd Garrison,[21] the beloved philanthropist, orator, and writer, was born in poverty, and was early apprenticed to a shoemaker, but became a journeyman printer before his majority. He suffered imprisonment for his opinions' sake, and may be said to have been the father of Abolitionism in America, fortunately living long enough to see the grand effort of his life crowned with success, in the emancipation of the blacks and the abolishment of slavery throughout the length and breadth of his native land. Kepler, the famous German astronomer, was the son of a poor innkeeper, and though enjoying royal patronage, often felt the pressure of poverty. Coleridge said: "Galileo was a great genius and so was Newton; but it would take two or three Galileos and Newtons to make one Kepler." We owe our knowledge of the laws of the planetary system to him.
Sir Richard Arkwright, inventor of the spinning-jenny, and founder of the great cotton industries of England, never saw the inside of a schoolhouse until after he was twenty years of age, having long served as a barber's assistant. Justice Tenterden, and Turner, greatest among landscape-painters, were also brought up to the same trade. James Brindley, the English engineer and mechanician, and Cook, the famed navigator, were day-laborers in early life. Romney, the artist, John Hunter, the physiologist, Professor Lee, the Orientalist, and John Gibson, the sculptor, were carpenters by trade. Shakespeare was a wool-comber in his youth. These low estates, the workshop and the mine, have often contributed liberally to recruit the ranks of those whom the world has recognized as men of genius.
Horace Mann declared that education is our only political safety. He might have gone further, and said our only moral safety also. It is not, however, the school and the college alone that bring about this grand object, though they are natural adjuncts. Real education is the apprenticeship of life, and that is always the best which we realize in our struggle to obtain a livelihood. Genius, as a rule, owes little to scholastic training,—within these pages there will be found proof sufficient of this. Sir T. F. Buxton says he owed more to his father's gamekeeper, who could neither read nor write, than to any other source of knowledge. He said this man was truly his "guide, philosopher, and friend," whose memory was stored with more varied rustic knowledge, good sense, and mother wit, than his young master ever met with afterwards. He adds that he was his first instructor, and that he profited far more by his remarks and admonitions than by those of his more learned tutors.[22]
Perhaps at first thought it may seem singular that so many unschooled geniuses should have risen to be famous in their several departments, but it is because they were geniuses. They saw and understood nature and art by intuition, while those of us who can claim no such distinction have been compelled to acquire knowledge by plummet and line, so to speak. "The ambition of a man of parts," says Sydney Smith, "should be not to know books, but things; not to show other men that he has read Locke, and Montesquieu, and Beccaria, and Dumont, but to show that he knows the subjects upon which they have written." Let us pursue our examples still further, for they are both interesting and remarkable when brought thus together.
Benjamin West[23] was born in Pennsylvania, a poor farmer's boy; but the genius of art was in him, and after patient study he became an eminent painter, finally succeeding Sir Joshua Reynolds as president of the Royal Academy in 1792. George III. was his personal friend and patron. He was so thoroughly appreciated there that he made England his home, where he died in 1820. John Britton, author of the "Beauties of England and Wales," as well as of several valuable works on architecture, was born in a mud cabin in Wiltshire, and was for years engaged as a bar-tender. He was finally turned adrift by his employer with two guineas in his pocket, but before his death his list of published books exceeded eighty volumes! Sir Francis Chantrey, the eminent sculptor, was in his minority a journeyman carver in wood. Talma, the great tragic actor of France, and favorite of the first Napoleon, was a dentist by trade. Gifford, the eminent English critic and essayist, was "graduated" from a cobbler's bench. When Cicero was asked concerning his lineage, he replied, "I commence an ancestry." Beaumarchais, the successful French dramatist, author of the "Barber of Seville" and the "Marriage of Figaro," was a watchmaker by trade, but developed such versatile genius as finally to excite the jealousy of the unscrupulous Voltaire.
Thomas Ball, the sculptor, who has done so much to ornament the parks and squares of Boston, used as a lad to sweep out the halls of the Boston Museum.[24] The author has often been within the walls of his pleasant studio in the environs of Florence, adjoining his charming domestic establishment. It is near to the spot where Powers produced his "Greek Slave," and overlooks the lovely city of Florence, divided by the Arno. Andrew Jackson, who became President of the United States, was the son of a poor Irish emigrant, and so was John C. Calhoun, the great Southern statesman and Vice-President. Abraham Lincoln and the late President Garfield were both sons of toil, the former being commonly designated as "the rail-splitter," the latter as "the canal-boy." Andrew Johnson was a journeyman tailor. Henry Wilson was a cobbler at the bench until he was nearly twenty-one. So also was Andersen,[25] the Danish novelist. Jasmin, who has been called the Burns of France, was the son of a street beggar. Allan Cunningham, poet, novelist, and miscellaneous writer, began life as a stone-mason; he became the father of four sons, all of whom won distinction in literature. Among the father's novels was that of "Paul Jones," which was remarkably successful. Dr. Isaac Miller, Dean of Carlisle, began life as a weaver, and Dr. Prideaux, Bishop of Worcester, earned his living in youth as a kitchen-boy at Oxford. Watt, the great Scotch inventor, whose steam-engine has revolutionized modern industry, and Whitney, inventor of the cotton-gin, were street gamins in childhood. Both these inventors were thought by their associates to be "beside themselves" as they grew towards maturity. "No man is quite sane," says Emerson; "each has a vein of folly in his composition, a slight determination of blood to the head, to make sure of holding him hard to some one point which nature has taken to heart."
The world's great men, according to the acceptation of the term, have not always been great scholars. General Nathaniel Greene, the successful Revolutionary commander, second only in military skill to Washington, was brought up at a blacksmith's forge. Horace Greeley, orator and journalist, was the son of a poor New Hampshire farmer and earned his living for years by setting type. William Sturgeon the able and famous electrician, Samuel Drew the English essayist, and Bloomfield the poet, all rose from the cobbler's bench; and so did Thomas Edwards, the profound naturalist. Robert Dodsley, the poet, dramatist, and friend of Pope began life as a London footman in livery. His tragedy of "Cleone" was so successful and well constructed, that Dr. Johnson said, "If Otway had written it, no other of his pieces would have been remembered," which was certainly extravagant praise.[26] Douglas Jerrold was born in a garret at Sheerness. Hobson, one of England's admirals, was a tailor's apprentice in early life. Huntington, the remarkable preacher and revivalist, was originally a coal-heaver, and Bewick, the father of wood-engraving, was a laborer in a coal mine for many years.
John Gay, the English poet, was not "born with a silver spoon in his mouth," but in youth he came up to London, where he served as a clerk to a silk-mercer. "How long he continued behind the counter," says Dr. Johnson, "or with what degree of softness and dexterity he received and accommodated the ladies, as he probably took no delight in telling it, is not known." He wrote comedies, fables, farces, and ballads, and wrote well, and was vastly popular. Gay was a great gourmand, very lazy, and fond of society.[27] The silk-mercer's clerk attained the much-coveted honor of resting at last in Westminster Abbey. Boffin, the great navigator, served at first before the mast as a common sailor. Robert Dick, the geologist and botanist, followed his trade as a baker through his whole life.
Would it not seem, in the light of these many instances, that practical labor forms the best training even for genius?
LinnÆus (Karl von LinnÉ), the great Swedish botanist, the most influential naturalist of the eighteenth century, was a shoemaker's apprentice. His works upon his favorite study are authority with students of science all over the world. He became physician to the king and made his home at Stockholm, but roamed over all Scandinavia in pursuing his special science of botany and also that of zoÖlogy. He will always be remembered as having been the first to perfect a systematic and scientific classification of plants and animals. He lies buried in the Upsala Cathedral.
Thorwaldsen, the great Danish sculptor, was the son of an humble Icelandic fisherman, but by reason of native genius he rose to bear the name of the greatest of modern sculptors. He left in the Copenhagen museum alone six hundred grand examples of the art he adorned. Many of our readers will remember having seen near Lucerne, Switzerland, one of his most remarkable pieces of sculpture, representing a wounded and dying lion of colossal size, designed to commemorate the heroic fidelity of the Swiss guards who fell Aug. 10, 1792. Thorwaldsen was passionately fond of children, so that the moment he entered a house he gathered all the juveniles about him; and in most of his marble groups he introduces children. He never married, but made his beautiful mistress, the Roman Fortunata, celebrated by repeating her face in many of his ideal groups. Thorwaldsen gave an impulse to art in his native country which has no like example in history; indeed, art is to-day the religion of Copenhagen, and Thorwaldsen is its prophet.
George Stephenson, the English engineer and inventor, was in his youth a stoker in a colliery, learning to read and write at a laborers' evening school. John Jacob Astor began life as a pedler in the streets of New York, where his descendants own a hundred million dollars worth of real estate.[28] The elder Vanderbilt, famous not alone for his millions but also for his vast enterprise in the development of commerce and railroads, served as a cabin-boy on a North River sloop during several years of his youth. George Peabody, the great American philanthropist and millionnaire, was born in poverty. Fisher Ames, the eminent statesman and orator, eked out a precarious living for years as a country pedagogue. Greatness lies not alone in the possession of genius, but in the right and effective use of it.
We have given examples sufficient to illustrate this branch of our subject, though they might be almost indefinitely extended. It was Daniel Webster[29] who said that "a man not ashamed of himself need not be ashamed of his early condition in life." Titles are vendible, but genius is the gift of Heaven.
Enthusiasm is the heritage of youth; it plans with audacity and executes with vigor: "It is the leaping lightning," according to Emerson, "not to be measured by the horse-power of the understanding." In the accomplishment of great deeds it is undoubtedly the keenest spur, and consequently those who have become eminent in the history of the world have mostly achieved their greatness before gray hairs have woven themselves about their brows. Unless the tree has borne ample blossoms in the spring, we shall look in vain for a generous crop in the fall. Notwithstanding the abundance of axioms as to youth and rashness dwelling together, we have ample evidence that it is the period of deeds, when the senses are unworn and the whole man is in the vigor of strength and earnestness. Goethe tells us that the destiny of any nation depends upon the opinions of its young men. Let us recall a few examples, in corroboration of this view, among those who have made their mark upon the times in which they lived.
Alexander the Great reigned over the Macedonians at sixteen; Scipio was but twenty-nine at the zenith of his military glory; Charles XII.[30] was only nineteen when, as commander-in-chief, he won the famous battle of Narva; CondÉ was twenty-two when he gained the battle of Rocroi; Scipio the Younger conquered Carthage at thirty-six, and Cortes subdued Mexico at the same age. At thirty Charlemagne was master of France and Germany; at thirty-two Clive had established the British power in India. Hannibal won his greatest victories before he was thirty, and Napoleon was but twenty-seven when he outgeneralled the veteran marshals of Austria on the plains of Italy. George Washington won his first battle as a colonel at twenty-two; Lafayette was a major-general in our army at the age of twenty. Nor are we to look only for youthful greatness among those who have won laurels in war. William Pitt was prime minister of England at twenty-four; Calhoun had achieved national greatness before he was thirty; while the names of John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and the elder Pitt in England also suggest themselves in this connection.[31]
Handel composed sonatas at ten years of age; Mozart was equally precocious, and died at thirty-six, at which age Shakespeare had written "Hamlet." Bellini, the composer, had produced "II Pirata," "La Sonnambula," and "La Norma," before his thirtieth year; "I Puritani" was finished at thirty, and he died two years later. Charles Matthews the elder began to write for the press at fourteen, and Moore wrote verses for print at the same age; undoubtedly both were open to cool and judicious criticism.[32] Henry Kirke White published a volume of poems at seventeen. Bryant, the first American poet of celebrity, began to write verses at the age of ten, and his most celebrated poem, "Thanatopsis," was written before he was twenty. Fitz-Greene Halleck, author of "Marco Bozzaris," wrote verses for the magazines at fourteen. Congreve was at the height of his literary fame at four-and-twenty,—he to whom Dryden said Shakespeare had bequeathed his poetical crown, and to whom Pope dedicated his version of the Iliad. Watt invented the steam-engine before he was thirty. The reproof administered by his grandmother for his idleness in taking off and replacing the cover of the teakettle, and "playing with the steam to no purpose," will occur to the reader. Joan of Arc[33] was but eighteen when she raised the siege of OrlÉans and conquered city after city, until Charles VII. was crowned king at Rheims.
Guizot, the distinguished French statesman and historian, seems to have been "a child who had no childhood." At eleven years of age he was able to read in their respective languages Thucydides, Demosthenes, Dante, Schiller, Gibbon, and Shakespeare.
Robert Hall, the eloquent English clergyman, was a remarkable instance of early mental development. It is said that before he was ten years of age he perused with interest and understanding Edwards's treatises on the "Affections" and on the "Will." His sermons, essays, and writings generally were eagerly read and admired by the public; but excessive application at last brought on insanity. It was gracefully said of him that his imperial fancy laid all nature under tribute. Even in madness he did not lose his power of retort. A hypocritical condoler visited him in the mad-house, and asked in a servile tone: "Pray, what brought you here, Mr. Hall?" Hall touched his brow significantly with his finger, and replied, "What'll never bring you, sir,—too much brains!"[34]
Macaulay had already won an exalted reputation for prose and poetry before he was twenty-three, and N. P. Willis, before he left college, had achieved enduring fame by his sacred poems,[35] which, in fact, he never afterwards excelled in a long and successful literary career. Schiller wrote and published in his fourteenth year a poem on Moses. Klopstock began his "Messiah" at seventeen, and Tasso had produced his "Rinaldo," and completed the first three cantos of "Jerusalem Delivered," before he was nineteen. Milton was an unremitting student at ten. Southey began to write verses before he was eleven, Chaucer and Cowley at twelve, and Leigh Hunt at about the same age. Pope,[36] like so many others, began to write poetry as a child, thus proving that "poets are born and not made." Chatterton, the remarkable literary prodigy, died at eighteen, but not until he had established a lasting reputation. Bulwer-Lytton was a successful author at about the same age, and so were Keats and Bayard Taylor. Dickens produced the "Pickwick Papers" before he was twenty-five, and it may safely be said that in wit, humor, and originality he never surpassed that delicious book. These seem interesting facts to remember, though they do not establish any actual criterion, since the thoughtful student of the past can adduce many notable examples of mature development in art and literature.
Among these is that of Edmund Burke, on the whole the greatest of English philosophical statesmen. He is the most remarkable instance of a number of men of genius who seem to have grown younger as they grew older,—that is, mentally and morally. Macaulay has noticed that Bacon's writings towards the close of his career exceeded those of his youth and manhood "in eloquence, in sweetness and variety of expression, and in richness of illustration."[37] He adds: "In this respect the history of his mind bears some resemblance to the history of the mind of Burke. The treatises on the 'Sublime and Beautiful,'[38] though written on a subject which the coldest metaphysician could hardly treat without being occasionally betrayed into florid writing, is the most unadorned of Burke's works. It appeared when he was twenty-five or twenty-six. When, at forty, he wrote the 'Thoughts on the Causes of the Present Discontents,' his reason and judgment had reached their full maturity, but his eloquence was in its splendid dawn. At fifty his rhetoric was as rich as good taste would admit; and when he died, at almost seventy, it had become ungracefully gorgeous. In his youth he wrote on the emotions produced by mountains and cascades, by the masterpieces of painting and sculpture, by the faces and necks of beautiful women, in the style of a Parliamentary report. In his old age he discussed treaties and tariffs in the most fervid and brilliant language of romance."
Socrates learned to play on musical instruments in his old age. Cato at eighty first studied the Greek language, and Plutarch did not apply himself to learn the Latin language until about the same age. Theophrastus[39] began his "Character of Man" on his ninetieth birthday. Peter Rusard, one of the fathers of French poetry, did not develop his poetic faculty until nearly fifty. Arnauld, the learned French theologian and philosopher, translated Josephus in his eightieth year. Lope de Vega, one of the most learned men of the sixteenth century, wrote his best at seventy years of age. Dr. Johnson applied himself to learn the Dutch language at seventy. At seventy-three, when quite feeble, he composed a Latin prayer to test to his own satisfaction the loss or retention of his mental faculties. Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" were the work of the author's last years. Franklin's philosophical pursuits were but fairly begun at fifty. La Mothe le Vayer's best treatises were written after he was eighty years of age, and Izaak Walton's when he was nearly ninety. Thomas Hobbes, the remarkable English philosopher and author, published his version of the Odyssey in his eighty-seventh year, and his Iliad in his eighty-eighth. Winckelmann,[40] author of the "History of Ancient Art," lived in ignorance and obscurity until the prime of his life, when he became famous. Landor was busy with authorship until after he was eighty. The Earl of Chatham made his most remarkable oratorical effort at seventy, and our own American orator and statesman, Robert C. Winthrop, at a still later period of his life. Fontenelle continued his literary pursuits until he was ninety-nine, "blossoming in the winter of his days," as Lord Orrery wrote of him. MÉnage, the celebrated French critic and scholar, wrote sonnets and epigrams at ninety. Julius Scaliger, the renowned Italian scholar and poet, dictated to his son, at the age of seventy, two hundred verses of his own composition from memory. Mr. Gladstone and John Bright, the English statesmen, are more recent examples of oratorical, mental, and physical powers in advanced years. George Bancroft the American historian, in his eighty-sixth year is still engaged in authorship, and Whittier and Holmes are writing with unabated vigor at nearly eighty years of age. Miss Elizabeth Peabody at eighty-four is still a vigorous writer and active philanthropist, and the same may be said of Mrs. Julia Ward Howe at the age of sixty-six. Mrs. Howe, indeed, is one of the foremost of American women, whether we regard the ripeness of her scholarship, the breadth of her understanding, the richness of her imagination, or the quiet intrepidity with which she champions great reforms.
CHAPTER II.
Who does not enjoy recalling these silent friends, favorite authors grown dear to us by age and long association? Some one has said that authors, like coins, grow dearer as they grow old. Indeed, Samuel Rogers, the banker and poet, declared that when friends at his famous "breakfasts" were praising a new book, he forthwith began to re-read an old one. All these writers were double-sided, so to speak; they had their book natures and their human natures, and it is when we prefer to contemplate them in the latter aspect that we like them best. Carlyle calls them "the vanguard in the march of mind, the intellectual backwoodsmen reclaiming from the idle wilderness new territory for the thought and activity of their happier brethren." It is true that we can form but a partial judgment of authors by their books, their motives being not always as pure as we are inclined to believe.[41] A traitor like Bolingbroke is quite capable of writing a captivating book on patriotism; and it has been said if Satan were to write one, it would be upon the advantages of virtue.
It is certain he has ever shown such a hearty appreciation of virtue that he holds in highest estimation his success in corrupting it. Examples flash across the memory. There was Sir Thomas More advocating toleration, while he was himself a fierce persecutor; Sallust declaring against the licentiousness of his age, yet addicted to habitual debaucheries; Byron assuming a misanthropy which he never felt; and Cowley boasting of his mistresses, though he had not the courage even to address one. Smollett's descriptions and scenes were often indelicate, though he was himself in that respect a faultless man. "As a rule, the author who is not in genius far above his productions must be a second-rate one at best," says Bulwer-Lytton. Sometimes we detect striking likenesses between the author and his works. Goldsmith, for instance, was the same hero to low-bred women, and the same coward to ladies, that he depicts in his charming comedy. It is difficult, however, in the light of Handel's inspired music, to realize what an animal nature possessed him in his every-day mood,—what a glutton he was at table; or to reconcile the sublime strains of Mozart with his trivial personality.[42] Still, Buffon persistently declares, "Le style c'est l'homme."
Addison, recognized as the purest and most perspicuous writer of the English language, though exercising such mastership of the pen, had no oral ability, and rarely attempted to talk in social circles. He said of himself that though he had a hundred pounds in the bank, he had no small coin in his pocket.[43]
Dr. Johnson and Coleridge were famous for their colloquial facility, but both of these were rather lecturers than talkers, however delightful in this respect the latter may have been. Johnson during his life was undoubtedly more of a power as a talker than as a writer. It has been said that Scott talked more poetry and Edmund Burke more eloquence than they ever wrote. Emerson thought that "better things are said, more incisive, more wit and insight are dropped in talk and forgotten, than gets into books." E. H. Chapin and H. W. Beecher have talked sounder and more brilliant theology than they ever preached from the pulpit. Spontaneous thoughts come from our inner consciousness; sermons and essays, from the cooler action of the brain. Coleridge, on first meeting Byron, entertained the poet with one of his monologues, wherein he ascended into the seventh heaven upon wings of theology and metaphysics. Leigh Hunt described the scene to Charles Lamb, and expressed his wonder that Coleridge should have chosen so unsympathetic an auditor. "Oh, it was only his fun," explained Lamb; "there's an immense deal of quiet humor about Coleridge!" Wordsworth speaks of him as the "rapt one, with the godlike forehead," the "heaven-eyed creature." Hazlitt says that "no idea ever entered the mind of man, but at some period or other it had passed over his head with rustling pinions." Talfourd writes of seeing "the palm-trees wave, and the pyramids tower, in the long perspective of his style." When Coleridge once asked Lamb, "Charles, did you ever hear me preach?" he received the quiet reply, "I never heard you do anything else." Rogers tells us: "Coleridge was a marvellous talker. One morning, when Hookham Frere also breakfasted with me, Coleridge talked for three hours without intermission about poetry, and so admirably that I wish every word he uttered had been written down." Madame de StaËl said of him that he was great in monologue, but that he had no idea of dialogue.
Macaulay was also remarkable for his conversational powers, which were greatly aided by an excellent memory. He has been accused of talking too much; and Sydney Smith once said of him: "He is certainly more agreeable since his return from India. His enemies might perhaps have said before—though I never did so—that he talked rather too much; but now he has occasional flashes of silence that make his conversation perfectly delightful!" In a party in which eminent men are present, the rule is said to be that, for good conversation, the number of talkers should never be fewer than the Graces or more than the Muses. Goldsmith, who wrote so charmingly and exhibited such a remarkable versatility with the pen, could make no figure in conversation. Fox, Bentley, Burke, Curran, and Swift were all brilliant talkers; Tasso, Dante, Gray, and Dryden[44] were all taciturn. Of Ben Jonson it is said that he was mostly without speech, sitting by the hour quite silent in society, sucking in the wine and humor of his companions.
Sheridan had the reputation of being a brilliant conversationalist; but we all know that many of his "impromptus" were laboriously prepared beforehand, and that he was wont to lie in wait silently for half an evening watching his opportunity to discharge the arrows of his polished wit. One would be glad to learn how it was with Shakespeare in society. He could hold his own in a controversy, however, as Thomas Fuller, in his "Worthies of England," says, "Many were the wet-combats between him and Ben Jonson:[45] which two I behold like a Spanish great galleon and an English man-of-war; master Jonson, like the former, was built far higher in learning; solid, but slow, in his performances. Shakespeare, like the English man-of-war, lesser in bulk but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds by the quickness of his wit and invention." Shakespeare himself has said, "Silence is only commendable in a neat's tongue dried and a maid not vendible;" but the ancient stoics thought that by silence they heard other men's imperfections and concealed their own.
The diplomatist Metternich said he had never known more than ten or twelve persons with whom it was pleasant to converse. Margaret Fuller said Carlyle's talk was an amazement to her, though she was familiar with his writings. His conversation, she declared, was a splendor scarcely to be faced with steady eye. He did not converse—only harangued. She thought him "arrogant and overbearing, but it was not the arrogance of littleness, nor self-love, but rather the arrogance of some old Scandinavian conqueror; it was his nature, the untamable impulse that had given him power to crush the dragons. She was not led to love or revere him, but liked him heartily,—liked to see him the powerful smith, the Siegfried, melting all the old iron in his furnace till it glows to a sunset red and burns you, if you senselessly go too near."[46]
When Dr. Johnson was asked why he was not invited out to dine as Garrick[47] was, he answered, as if it was a great triumph to him, "Because great lords and ladies don't like to have their mouths stopped!" He indulged a furious hatred to Americans, and whenever there was an opportunity sneered at them even more bitterly than he did at Scotchmen. It will be remembered that he thought something could be made out of a Scotchman "if you caught him young;" but he would not admit even this saving clause as regarded Americans. He said, "I am willing to love all, all mankind, except an American." He called them "robbers and pirates;" adding, "I'd burn and destroy them!"
These words were addressed to Miss Anna Seward, of Lichfield. It was in the grammar school of this ancient cathedral town that Addison, Dr. Johnson, 788788and Garrick received their early education, and Johnson was a native of the place. Miss Seward's father was the canon resident of Lichfield Cathedral. In his family there was a beautiful young lady named Honora Sneyd, a companion to his daughter. John AndrÉ, a cultured London youth, fell in love with Honora, and was tacitly accepted. The young man was somewhat suddenly called back to the metropolis on business, and a separation thus ensued which seemed to wean the lady's affections from him, so that she soon after married a Mr. Edgeworth and in the course of time became the mother of Maria Edgeworth, the well-known novel-writer.[48] John AndrÉ remained faithful to his first love, and came to America carrying in his bosom a miniature of Honora suspended from his neck. His sad fate during our Revolutionary War is well known to all. He was the Major AndrÉ whom Washington reluctantly executed as a spy, and whose memorial is now conspicuous in Westminster Abbey.
Peter Corneille, the great French dramatic poet, had nothing in his exterior that indicated his genius. As to his conversational powers, they were simply insipid, and never failed to weary all listeners. Nature had endowed him with brilliant gifts, but forgot to grant him the ordinary accomplishments. He did not even speak correct French, which he never failed to write with perfection. When his friends represented to him how much more he might please by not disdaining to correct these trivial errors, he would smile and say, "I am none the less Peter Corneille!" We learn from Rogers that in the early days of his popularity Byron was quite diffident in society, or at least never ventured to take part in the conversation. If any one happened to let fall an observation which offended him, he never attempted to reply, but treasured it up for days, and would then come out with some cutting remarks, giving them as his deliberate opinion, the result of his experience of the individual's character. Southey[49] was stiff, reserved, sedate, and so wrapped up in a garb of asceticism that Charles Lamb once stutteringly told him he was "m-made for a m-m-monk, but somehow the co-co-cowl didn't fit."
Racine made this confidential confession to his son: "Do not think that I am sought after by the great on account of my dramas; Corneille composed nobler verses than mine, but no one notices him, and he only pleases by the mouth of the actors. I never allude to my works when with men of the world, but I amuse them about matters they like to hear. My talent with them consists not in making them feel that I have any, but in showing them that they have." The well-remembered saying about Goldsmith's lack of conversational power is excellent because it was so true; namely, that "he wrote like an angel and talked like poor Poll."[50] Fisher Ames and Rufus Choate were distinguished for their conversational powers. Stuart, the American painter, was remarkable in this respect; and so were Washington Allston, Edgar A. Poe, Margaret Fuller, and the late Caleb Cushing. The lady just named was considered to be the best talker of her sex since Madame de StaËl. Indeed, those who knew her well said she talked even better than she wrote, which was saying much.
Charles Sumner used to relate a talk in a company where Daniel Webster was present. The question under discussion was what were the best means of culture. Webster was silent until all had spoken. He then said: "Gentlemen, you have overlooked one of the means of culture which I consider of the first importance, and from which I have gained the most; that is, good conversation."[51]
Whipple has said in one of his essays that "real, earnest conversation is a kind of intellectual cannibalism, where strong minds feed on each other and mightily enjoy the repast."
Charles Lamb's most sportive essays, which read as though they came almost spontaneously from his pen, are known to have been the result of intense brain labor. He would spend a whole week in elaborating a single humorous letter to a friend. Lamb was so sensitive concerning proof-reading as to be the dread of the printers. It is said of the poet-laureate of England that he has been known to re-write a poem twenty times and more before he was satisfied to give it to the printer. Dickens, when writing a book, was accustomed to shut himself up for days together, and to work with fearful energy until the task was completed; after which he would come forth presenting the appearance of a person recovering from a fit of illness. The free-and-easy spirit which characterizes his pages affords no evidence of the travail through which their author passed in giving them birth. Bulwer-Lytton took matters much more philosophically. He always worked at pen-craft leisurely, never more than three or four hours a day; and yet by carefully observing a system the aggregate of his productions was very large. Balzac, after thinking over a subject, would retire to his study and write it out half a dozen times before he gave the manuscript to the printer, whom he afterwards tormented to the very verge of exasperation by his proof alterations. To come nearer to our own time, we may remark that Longfellow, whose versification seems always to have flowed with such ease and fluency from his pen, was a slow and painstaking producer, sometimes altering and amending until the original draft of an essay or poem was quite improved out of sight.
Dr. Channing nearly drove his printers crazy; after his manuscript—almost illegible by corrections and interlineations—had been returned to them with alterations, omissions, and additions on the first proof-sheets, he would ponder over, alter, and amend three or four successive proofs before he finally allowed the result to meet the public eye,—a new edition involving another series of alterations. The lyric which cost Tennyson the most trouble was "Come into the Garden, Maud." It is said to have been held back from the public after it had been a year in his hands, going through repeated processes of alteration. What time indorses, requires time to create and finish. To this determination of Tennyson to condense all his thoughts into the smallest space, and never to expand when by patient labor he can contract, we owe the few lines in which he states in the "Princess" the whole nebular theory of the universe as expounded by Kant and Laplace; and how much reflection must have been required to condense the description of the fundamental defect of English law, on which volumes have been written, as he has done in "Aylmer's Field:"—
"The lawless science of our law,
That codeless myriad of precedent,
That wilderness of single instances."
When we observe good workmanship, whether it be by a stone-mason, a cabinet-maker, or a writer, we may be sure that it has cost much patient labor. His biographer tells us that Moore thought ten or fifteen lines in twenty-four hours a good day's accomplishment in poetry; and at this rate he wrote "Lalla Rookh."[52] Wordsworth wrote his verses, laid them aside for weeks, then, taking them up, frequently rewrote them a score of times before he called them finished. Buffon's "Studies of Nature" cost him fifty years of writing and re-writing before the work was published. John Foster, the profound and eloquent English essayist, often spent hours upon a single sentence. Ten years elapsed between the first sketch of Goldsmith's "Traveller" and its final completion. Rochefoucauld[53] spent fifteen years over his little book of Maxims, altering some of them thirty times. Rogers admitted that he had more than once spent ten days upon a single verse before he turned it to suit him. Vaugelas, the great French scholar, devoted twenty years to his admirable translation of "Quintus Curtius."
Some authors have produced with such rapidity as to approach improvisation. Perhaps the most remarkable instance of this was in the case of Lope de Vega, who composed and wrote a versified drama in a single day, and is known to have done so for seven consecutive days. Contemporary with Shakespeare and Cervantes, De Vega has left behind him two thousand original dramas sparkling with vivacity of dialogue and richness of invention. Soldier, duellist, poet, sailor, and priest, his long life was one of intense activity and adventure.[54] The name of Hardy, the French dramatic author and actor, occurs to us in this connection; though an inferior genius to De Vega, he wrote over six hundred original dramas. He was considered the first dramatic writer of the days of Henry IV. and Louis XIII., before whom Hardy often appeared upon the stage personating the heroes of his own dramas.
Prynne, the English antiquary, politician, and pamphlet-writer, sat down early in the morning to his composition. Every two hours his man brought him a roll and a pot of ale as refreshment; and so he continued until night, when he partook of a hearty dinner. One of his pamphlets was entitled "A Scourge for Stage-Players," which was considered so scurrilous that the Star-Chamber sentenced him to pay a heavy fine, to be exposed in the pillory, to lose his ears, and to be imprisoned for life. He was finally released from prison. While he was confined in the pillory, a pyramid of his offending pamphlets was made close at hand, to windward of his position, and set on fire, so that the author was very nearly choked to death by the smoke. He was almost as incessant and inveterate a writer as Petrarch, and considered being debarred from pen and ink an act more barbarous than the loss of his ears. However, he partially obviated his want of the usual facilities by writing a whole volume on his prison walls while confined in the Tower of London.
Byron wrote the "Corsair" in ten days, which was an average of nearly two hundred lines a day,—a fact which he acknowledged to Moore with a degree of shame. He said he would not confess it to everybody, considering it to be a humiliating fact, proving his own want of judgment in publishing, and the public in reading, "things which cannot have stamina for permanent attention." The surpassing beauty of the "Corsair," however, excuses all the author said or did in connection with it. It may nevertheless be affirmed that, as a rule, no great work has ever been performed with ease, or ever will be accomplished without encountering the throes of time and labor. Dante, we remember, saw himself "growing lean" over his "Divine Comedy." Mary Russell Mitford, the charming English authoress, dramatist, poet, and novelist, who so excelled in her sketches of country life, says of herself: "I write with extreme slowness, labor, and difficulty; and, whatever you may think, there is a great difference of facility in different minds. I am the slowest writer, I suppose, in England, and touch and retouch incessantly." Her life was one of constant labor and self-abnegation in behalf of a worthless, selfish, and imperious father. He was a robust, showy, wasteful profligate, and a gambler. A doctor by profession, he was a spendthrift and sensualist by occupation. He contracted a venal marriage with an heiress much older than himself, and after squandering her entire fortune he fell back upon his daughter as the bread-winner for the whole family. By a remarkable chance she became the possessor of a great lottery prize, from which she realized twenty thousand pounds, every penny of which her beastly father drank and gambled away. Still, the devotion and industry of the daughter never waned for a moment. Her patient struggles have placed her name on the roll of fame, while her father's has sunk into deserved oblivion.
