The first name I find on my list of novelists who have been subject to ill health is that of Cervantes. He did not start life an invalid,—far from it. He seems to have been a youth of unusual vigor. But when only twenty-three years old he was severely wounded and lost his left hand in battle—“For the greater glory of the right,” as he gallantly exclaimed. After that he spent five years in slavery and he escaped from the Moors only to languish at various times in a Spanish prison. Hardship, and privations doubtless, and also his old wounds, had completely shattered his health when he finally sat down to create his immortal “Don Quixote.” The first part was published when he was fifty-eight years old, the last when he was sixty-nine.

When Fielding wrote “Tom Jones,” he had been for years a martyr to gout and other diseases: Gibbon predicted for this work “a diuturnity exceeding that of the house of Austria!” It is curious that this book, which bubbles over with the joy of life, was written at a time when Fielding was plunged into the deepest melancholy.

Swift suffered from “labyrinthian vertigo.”

Laurence Sterne, creator of “Tristram Shandy,” was consumptive, as he says of himself, “from the first hour I drew breath unto this that I can hardly breathe at all.” Sterne, no longer young, was increasingly suffering during the years he brought forth the numerous volumes of his unique book.

Sir Walter Scott was not only lame from infancy but is an inspiring example of what can be accomplished under conditions of extreme physical suffering. When he was forty-six years old began a series of agonizing attacks of cramps of the stomach which recurred at frequent intervals for two years. But his activity and capacity for work remained unbroken. He made his initial attempt at play-writing when he was recovering from this first seizure. Before the year was out he had completed “Rob Roy.” Within six months it was followed by “The Heart of Midlothian,” which filled four volumes of the second series of “Tales of my Landlord,” and has remained one of the most popular among his novels. “The Bride of Lammermoor” and “The Legend of Montrose” were dictated to amanuenses, through fits of suffering so acute that he could not suppress cries of agony. When Laidlaw begged him to stop dictating he only answered, “Nay, Willie, only see that the doors are fast. I would fain keep all the cry, as well as all the wool to ourselves, but to give over work, that can only be when I am woolen.”

Mme. de La Fayette lost her health a year before her epoch-making novel, “La Princess de ClÉves,” was published. She lived fifteen years afterwards, “Étant de ceux,” as Sainte-Beuve says, “qui traÎnent leur miserable vie jusqu’À la derniÈre goutte d’huile.” “La Princesse de ClÉves” is not only intrinsically a work of real merit, which is still read with pleasure, but is important because it is the first novel of sentiment, the first novel, in the sense we moderns use the word, that was ever written.

Le Sage was a handsome, engaging youth, but it was not until he was thirty-nine years old that he made his first success with the “Diable Boiteux.” Already his deafness was rapidly increasing; and he was sixty-seven years old and had long been completely deaf when the last volume of the masterpiece, “Gil Blas,” appeared.

Vauvenargues was a soldier until he had both of his legs frozen during a winter campaign. This injury, from which he never recovered, forced him to leave the army. An attack of small-pox completed the ruin of his health, and thenceforth he led a secluded life devoted to literary pursuits. It is mainly as a novelist that Vauvenargues occupies a place in French literature, although his other works were held in high esteem by his contemporaries.

Edmond and Jules de Goncourt are names famous in French literary history. “Learning something from Flaubert, and teaching almost everything to Zola, they invented a new kind of novel, and their works are the result of a new vision of the world.... A novel of the Goncourts is made up of an infinite number of details, set side by side, every detail equally prominent.... French critics have complained that the language of the Goncourts is no longer the French of the past, and this is true. It is their distinction, the finest of their inventions, that in order to render new sensations, a new vision of things, they invented a new language.” (Mr. Arthur Symons.) Their journal is a gold mine from which present-day writers still carry away unacknowledged nuggets. M. Paul Bourget said of them: “Life reduced itself to a series of epileptic attacks, preceded and followed by a blank.”

Dostoievsky is considered by many critics the greatest of the great Russian novelists.

His health was completely shattered by his spending four years in a Siberian prison as a political offender. This terrible experience, however, served to create “Recollections of a Dead House” and “Buried Alive in Siberia.”

Anton Chekhov, the Russian novelist and short story writer, was only a little over twenty when he began to suffer from attacks of blood spitting. Although he believed that these came from his throat they were undoubtedly due to consumption. He was also a martyr to digestive trouble and headaches.

Chekhov possessed to an unusual degree the nervous energy which so frequently accompanies disease. He was a remarkably prolific author, so much so that in one of his letters he prophesies that he will soon have written enough to fill a library with his own works. Literature was, however, not his only pursuit. He also practiced medicine, although he refused to receive any remuneration for his services. He was public spirited and altruistic and organized an association for the relief of Siberian prisoners.

His books enjoy an immense vogue and have been translated into every language.

Whatever may be the future of English fiction, Charlotte BrontË’s novels will always command attention, by reason of their intensity and individuality. She suffered from permanent bodily weakness with various complications.

Some critics consider Emily BrontË superior to her sister. “Wuthering Heights” is a “thing apart, passionate, unforgettable.” This remarkable book was written while its author was dying of consumption.

That super-woman, known to fame as George Eliot, suffered all her life from frequent attacks of illness. In spite of her physical limitations she was capable of the most prolonged and intense application. Her numerous novels, dating from her thirty-sixth year, are only a part of her widespread intellectual activities.

Jacobsen, the great Danish novelist, unfortunately too little known in this country, was, like so many others, cut off from his chosen or destined profession and driven into literature by ill health. During the worst phases of his sufferings he produced books that in their way have never been surpassed.

I must mention here, though she belongs to no category, that extraordinary child, Marie Bashkirtseff, who, dying of consumption at twenty-four, left behind her several pictures of great promise (two of them are in the Luxembourg Gallery, I believe) and her “Journal,” a remarkable production which created a sensation thirty years ago and which has lately been republished.

Robert Louis Stevenson’s life is so well-known that I need only to recall him to your memory.

Henry James was so delicate that he was forced to remain a spectator of the Civil War, in which his younger brothers fought. Mr. Edmund Gosse writes the following description of a visit to Henry James when the latter was already thirty-two years old. “Stretched on a sofa and apologizing for not rising to greet me, his appearance gave me a little shock, for I had not thought of him as an invalid. He hurriedly and rather evasively declared that he was not that, but that a muscular weakness of the spine obliged him, as he said, ‘to assume a horizontal posture during some hours of every day in order to bear an almost unbroken routine of evening engagements.’” It is recorded that in one winter he dined out one hundred and seven times. What amazing assiduity! His health gradually grew stronger, but for many years it seriously handicapped his activity.

I should like to linger a moment with Lafcadio Hearn. He is known to the world at large as the foremost interpreter of the old and new Japan. He married a Japanese wife and this gave him a peculiar insight into the customs as well as the psychology of his adopted countrymen. His books show a unique understanding of the Oriental mind and their literary art is exquisite. He not only suffered from ill health, but in addition lost the sight of one eye in early youth and ever after went in fear of total blindness. Yet, far from regretting his afflictions, this is what he said about them: “The owner of pure horse-health never purchased the power of discerning the half-lights. In its separation of the spiritual from the physical portion of existence, severe sickness is often invaluable to the sufferer, in the revelation it bestows of the psychological undercurrents of human existence. From the intuitive recognition of the terrible but at the same time glorious fact, that the highest life can only be reached by subordinating physical to spiritual influences, separating the immaterial from the material self,—therein lies all the history of asceticism and self-suppression as the most efficacious measure of developing religious and intellectual power.” That is what experience had taught one who was certainly not a religionist.