Part 13

"You see in my chamber," said Goethe, near the close of his life, "no sofa; I sit always in my old wooden chair, and never, till a few weeks ago, have permitted even a leaning place for my head to be added. If surrounded by tasteful furniture, my thoughts are arrested, and I am placed in an agreeable, but passive state. Unless we are accustomed to them from early youth, splendid chambers and elegant furniture had best be left to people who neither have nor can have any thoughts."

Rogers, the banker poet, once said to Wordsworth, "If you would let me edit your poems, and give me leave to omit some half-dozen, and make a few trifling alterations, I would engage that you should be as popular a poet as any living." Wordsworth's answer is said to have been, "I am much obliged to you, Mr. Rogers; I am a poor man, but I would rather remain as I am."

Thomson solicited Burns to supply him with twenty or thirty songs for the musical work in which he was engaged, with an understanding distinctly specified, that the bard should receive a regular pecuniary remuneration for his contributions. With the first part of the proposal Burns instantly complied, but peremptorily rejected the last. "As to any remuneration, you may think my songs either above or below price; for they shall absolutely be the one or the other. In the honest enthusiasm with which I embark in your undertaking, to talk of money, wages, fee, hire, etc., would be downright prostitution of soul." Thomson, some time after, notwithstanding the prohibition, ventured to acknowledge his services by a small pecuniary present, which the poet with some difficulty restrained himself from returning. "I assure you, my dear sir," he wrote to the donor, "that you truly hurt me with your pecuniary parcel. It degrades me in my own eyes. However, to return it would savor of affectation; but as to any more traffic of that debtor and creditor kind, I swear by that honor which crowns the upright statue of Robert Burns' integrity--on the least motion of it, I will indignantly spurn the by-past transaction, and from that moment commence entire stranger to you! Burns' character for generosity of sentiment and independence of mind will, I trust, long outlive any of his wants which the cold, unfeeling ore can supply; at least, I will take care that such a character he shall deserve." His sensitive nature inclined him to reject the present, as proud old Sam Johnson threw away with indignation the new shoes which had been placed at his chamber door. "I ought not," says Emerson, "to allow any man, because he has broad lands, to feel that he is rich in my presence. I ought to make him feel that I can do without his riches, that I cannot be bought,--neither by comfort, neither by pride,--and though I be utterly penniless, and receiving bread from him, that he is the poor man beside me."

Isaac Disraeli, when a young man, was informed that a place in the establishment of a great merchant was prepared for him; he replied that he had written and intended to publish a poem of considerable length against commerce, which was the corrupter of man; and he at once inclosed his poem to Dr. Johnson, who, however, was in his last illness, and was unable to read it. Coleridge, on being offered a half share in the Morning Post and Courier, with a prospect of two thousand pounds a year, announced that he would not give up country life, and the lazy reading of old folios, for two thousand times that income. "In short," he added, "beyond three hundred and fifty pounds a year, I regard money as a real evil." Professor Agassiz, when once invited to lecture, replied to the munificent lecture association that he was very sorry, but he was just then busy with some researches that left him no time to make money. There is a familiar story told of Marvell, who is said to have so greatly pleased Charles II. at a private interview, by his wit and agreeable conversation, that the latter dispatched the lord treasurer Danby to offer him a thousand pounds, with a promise of a lucrative place at court, which Marvell refused, notwithstanding he was immediately afterward compelled to borrow a guinea of a friend. Just at the time when the English mind was agitated upon the subject of American taxation, and Goldsmith was most needy, an effort was made to bring him into the ministerial ranks. Dr. Scott was sent to negotiate with the poet. "I found him," said Scott, "in a miserable suite of chambers in the Temple. I told him my authority: I told him I was empowered to pay most liberally for his exertions; and, would you believe it! he was so absurd as to say, 'I can earn as much as will supply my wants without writing for any party; the assistance you offer is therefore unnecessary to me;' and so I left him in his garret!" Sir John Hawkins one day met Goldsmith; his lordship told him he had read his poem, The Traveller, and was much delighted with it; that he was going lord lieutenant to Ireland, and that hearing that he was a native of that country, he should be glad to do him any kindness. The honest poor man and sincere lover of literature replied that he "had a brother there, a clergyman, that stood in need of help. As for myself, I have no dependence upon the promises of great men; I look to the booksellers for support; they are my best friends, and I am not inclined to forsake them for others." For this frank expression of magnanimity and manly self-dependence, the pricked Hawkins, and the envious Boswell, speaking of the incident afterward, called Goldsmith an "idiot." Some of Walter Scott's friends offered him, or rather proposed to offer him, enough of money, as was supposed, to enable him to arrange with his creditors. He paused for a moment; and then recollecting his powers, said proudly, "No! this right hand shall work it all off!" Lady Blessington said to Willis, Disraeli and Dr. Beattie being present: "Moore went to Jamaica with a profitable appointment. The climate disagreed with him, and he returned home, leaving the business in the hands of a confidential clerk, who embezzled eight thousand pounds in the course of a few months and absconded. Moore's misfortunes awakened a great sympathy among his friends. Lord Lansdowne was the first to offer his aid. He wrote to Moore, that for many years he had been in the habit of laying aside from his income eight thousand pounds, for the encouragement of the arts and literature, and that he should feel that it was well disposed of for that year if Moore would accept it, to free him from his difficulties. It was offered in the most delicate and noble manner, but Moore declined it. The members of 'White's' (mostly noblemen) called a meeting, and (not knowing the amount of the deficit) subscribed in one morning twenty-five thousand pounds, and wrote to the poet that they would cover the sum, whatever it might be. This was declined. Longman and Murray then offered to pay it, and wait for their remuneration from his works. He declined even this, and went to Passy with his family, where he economized and worked hard till it was canceled. At one time two different counties of Ireland sent committees to him, to offer him a seat in Parliament; and as he depended on his writings for a subsistence, offering him at the same time twelve hundred pounds a year while he continued to represent them. Moore was deeply touched with it, and said no circumstance of his life had ever gratified him so much. He admitted that the honor they proposed him had been his most cherished ambition, but the necessity of receiving a pecuniary support at the same time was an insuperable obstacle. He could never enter Parliament with his hands tied, and his opinions and speech fettered, as they would be irresistibly in such circumstances." Southey was offered by Walter the editorship of The Times, but declined it, saying, "No emolument, however great, would induce me to give up a country life, and those pursuits in literature to which the studies of so many years have been directed." "Will you be created a count? a title is sometimes useful," said Louis Philippe to M. Guizot. The proffered honor was declined, and the king replied, "You are right; your name alone is sufficient, and is a higher dignity." D'Alembert, when in receipt of but a limited income,--more than half of which he gave away in charity,--declined an invitation of Frederick the Great to reside at the court of Berlin. The Empress Catherine offered him the post of tutor or governor to the czarowitch, with an income of one hundred thousand livres, and on his refusal wrote: "I know that your refusal arises from your desire to cultivate your studies and your friendships in quiet. But this is of no consequence; bring all your friends with you, and I promise you, that both you and they shall have every accommodation in my power." Still he refused; the "powers and potentialities of the courts and royalty" being insufficient to seduce his independence. Beranger, the "French Burns," the poet of the people, from 1820 to the end of his life called "the real monarch of France," had the same proud spirit of independence. General Sebastiani, then minister of war, and dangerously ill, received one day a visit from Beranger. "Ah! my dear friend," said the old soldier to the poet, "I am very ill. Come, my dear Beranger, we must do something for our friends. I declare to you that I shall not die quietly if I leave you in poverty behind me. Madame de Praslin has a fortune of her own; therefore it will not be doing any injustice to my children. Listen; I have there in my bureau a few small savings, about two hundred thousand francs; let us divide them. It is an old friend, an old soldier, who offers you this; and I swear, on my cross of honor, that no one shall know the pleasure you will have done me in accepting the small present." The poet refused. Spinoza, at one time, we are informed, did not spend six sous a day, on an average, and did not drink more than a pint of wine in a month. "Nature is satisfied with little," he used to say, "and when she is content, I am so too." A good friend brought him one day a present of two thousand florins. The philosopher, "in the presence of his host, civilly excused himself from accepting the money, saying that he was in need of nothing, and that the possession of so much money would only serve to distract him from his studies and occupations."

Dr. Johnson contracted an inveterate dislike to sustained intellectual exertion, and wondered how any one could write except for money, and never, or very rarely, wrote from any more elevated impulse than the stern pressure of want. "Who will say," says Richard Cumberland, "that Johnson himself would have been such a champion in literature, such a front-rank soldier in the fields of fame, if he had not been pressed into the service, and driven on to glory with the bayonet of sharp necessity pointed at his back? If fortune had turned him into a field of clover, he would have lain down and rolled in it. The mere manual labor of writing would not have allowed his lassitude and love of ease to have taken the pen out of the inkhorn, unless the cravings of hunger had reminded him that he must fill the sheet before he saw the table-cloth.... He would have put up prayers for early rising, and lain in bed all day, and with the most active resolutions possible, been the most indolent mortal living.... I have heard that illustrious scholar assert that he subsisted himself for a considerable space of time upon the scanty pittance of four-pence half-penny per day. How melancholy to reflect that his vast trunk and stimulating appetite were to be supported by what will barely feed the weaned infant!" No wonder he so often screened himself when he ate, or, later in life, lost his temper with Mrs. Thrale when she made a jest of hunger!

It is related that soon after the publication of the Life of Savage, which was anonymous, Mr. Walter Harte, dining with Mr. Cave, the proprietor of The Gentleman's Magazine, at St. John's Gate, took occasion to speak very handsomely of the work. The next time Cave met Harte, he told him that he had made a man happy the other day at his home, by the encomiums he bestowed on Savage's Life. "How could that be?" said Harte; "none were present but you and I." Cave replied, "You might observe I sent a plate of victuals behind the screen. There skulked the biographer, one Johnson, whose dress was so shabby that he durst not make his appearance. He overheard our conversation; and your applauding his performance delighted him exceedingly."

"Man," said Goethe, "recognizes and praises only that which he himself is capable of doing; and those who by nature are mediocre have the trick of depreciating productions which, if they have faults, have also good points, so as to elevate the mediocre productions which they are fitted to praise." "While it is so undesirable that any man should receive what he has not examined, a far more frequent danger is that of flippant irreverence. Not all the heavens contain is obvious to the unassisted eye of the careless spectator. Few men are great, almost as few able to appreciate greatness. The critics have written little upon the Iliad in all these ages which Alexander would have thought worth keeping with it in his golden box. Nor Shakespeare, nor Dante, nor Calderon, have as yet found a sufficient critic, though Coleridge and the Schlegels have lived since they did. Meantime," continues Margaret Fuller, "it is safer to take off the hat and shout vivat! to the conqueror, who may become a permanent sovereign, than to throw stones and mud from the gutter. The star shines, and that it is with no borrowed light, his foes are his voucher. And every planet is a portent to the world; but whether for good or ill, only he can know who has science for many calculations. Not he who runs can read these books, or any books of any worth."

Homer was called a plagiarist by some of the earlier critics, and was accused of having stolen from older poets all that was remarkable in the Iliad and Odyssey. Sophocles was brought to trial by his children as a lunatic. Socrates, considered as the wisest and the most moral of men, Cicero treated as an usurer, and Athenaeus as illiterate. Plato was accused of envy, lying, avarice, robbery, incontinence, and impiety. Some of the old writers wrote to prove Aristotle vain, ambitious, and ignorant. Plato is said to have preferred the burning of all of the works of Democritus. Pliny and Seneca thought Virgil destitute of invention, and Quintilian was alike severe upon Seneca. It was a long time, says Seneca, that Democritus was taken for a madman, and before Socrates had any esteem in the world. How long was it before Cato could be understood? Nay, he was affronted, contemned, and rejected; and people never knew the value of him until they had lost him. "The Northern Highlanders," said Wilson, "do not admire Waverley, so I presume the Southern Highlanders despise Guy Mannering. The Westmoreland peasants think Wordsworth a fool. In Borrowdale, Southey is not known to exist. I met ten men at Hawick who did not think Hogg a poet, and the whole city of Glasgow think me a madman. So much for the voice of the people being the voice of God."

Goldsmith tells us, speaking of Waller's Ode on the Death of Cromwell, that English poetry was not then "quite harmonized: so that this, which would now be looked upon as a slovenly sort of versification, was in the times in which it was written almost a prodigy of harmony." At the same time, after praising the harmony of the Rape of the Lock, he observes that the irregular measure at the opening of the Allegro and Penseroso "hurts our English ear." Gray "loved intellectual ease and luxury, and wished as a sort of Mahometan paradise to 'lie on a sofa, and read eternal new romances of Mirivaux and Crebillon.' Yet all he could say of Thomson's Castle of Indolence, when it was first published, was, that there were some good verses in it. Akenside, too, whom he was so well fitted to appreciate, he thought 'often obscure, and even unintelligible.'" Horace Walpole marveled at the dullness of people who can admire anything so stupidly extravagant and barbarous as the Divina Commedia. "The long-continued contempt for Bunyan and De Foe was merely an expression of the ordinary feeling of the cultivated classes toward anything which was identified with Grub Street; but it is curious to observe the incapacity of such a man as Johnson to understand Gray or Sterne, and the contempt which Walpole expressed for Johnson and Goldsmith, while he sincerely believed that the poems of Mason were destined to immortality." The poet Rogers tells us that Henry Mackenzie advised Burns to take for his model in song-writing Mrs. John Hunter! Byron believed that Rogers and Moore were the truest poets among his contemporaries; that Pope was the first of all English, if not of all existing poets, and that Wordsworth was nothing but a namby-pamby driveler. De Quincey speaks of "Mr. Goethe" as an immoral and second-rate author, who owes his reputation chiefly to the fact of his long life and his position at the court of Weimar, and Charles Lamb expressed a decided preference of Marlowe's Dr. Faustus to Goethe's immortal Faust. Dr. Johnson's opinion of Milton's sonnets is pretty well known--"those soul-animating strains, alas! too few," as Wordsworth estimated them. Hannah More wondered that Milton could write "such poor sonnets." Johnson said, "Milton, madam, was a genius that could cut a Colossus from a rock, but could not carve heads upon cherry-stones." He attacked Swift on all occasions. He said, speaking of Gulliver's Travels, "When once you have thought of big men and little men, it is very easy to do all the rest." He called Gray "a dull fellow." "Sir, he was dull in company, dull in his closet, dull everywhere. He was dull in a new way, and that made many people call him great." Talking of Sterne, he said, "Nothing odd will last long. Tristram Shandy did not last." See how Horace Walpole disposes of some of the gods of literature. "Tiresome Tristram Shandy, of which I could never get through three volumes." "I have read Sheridan's Critic; it appeared wondrously flat and old, and a poor imitation." He speaks of wading through Spenser's "allegories and drawling stanzas." Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, he said, are "a lump of mineral from which Dryden extracted all the gold, and converted it into beautiful medals." "Dante was extravagant, absurd, disgusting: in short, a Methodist parson in Bedlam." "Montaigne's Travels I have been reading; if I was tired of the Essays, what must one be of these? What signifies what a man thought who never thought of anything but himself? and what signifies what a man did who never did anything?" "Boswell's book," he said, "is the story of a mountebank and his zany." Pepys, in his Diary, speaks of having bought "Hudibras, both parts, the book now in greatest fashion for drollery, though I cannot, I confess, see enough where the wit lies." Scaliger called Montaigne "a bold ignoramus." Paley used to say that to read Tristram Shandy was the summum bonum of life. Goldsmith said its author was a "block-head." Goethe told a young Italian who asked him his opinion of Dante's great poem, that he thought the Inferno abominable, the Purgatorio dubious, and the Paradiso tiresome. Coleridge, talking of Goethe's Faust, said, "There is no whole in the poem; the scenes are mere magic-lantern pictures, and a large part of the work is to me very flat. Moreover, much of it is vulgar, licentious, and blasphemous." "Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, is, I think," says Southey, "the clumsiest attempt at German sublimity I ever saw." Johnson told Anna Seward that "he would hang a dog that read the Lycidas of Milton twice." Waller wrote of Paradise Lost on its first appearance, "The old blind school-master, John Milton, hath published a tedious poem on the fall of man; if its length be not considered a merit, it has no other." Curran declared Paradise Lost to be the "worst poem in the language." When Harvey's book on the circulation of the blood came out, "he fell mightily in his practice. It was believed by the vulgar that he was crack-brained, and all the physicians were against him." Who has forgotten the fierce attack of the Quarterly Review on Jane Eyre, in which the unknown author, who was a clergyman's daughter, is pronounced "a person who, with great mental powers, combines a total ignorance of society, a great coarseness of taste, and a heathenish doctrine of religion"? "If we ascribe the book to a woman at all," continues the keen-sighted critic, "we have no alternative but to ascribe it to one who has, for some sufficient reason, forfeited the society of her own sex." Schiller's intimate friends decided against the Indian Death Song, which Goethe afterward pronounced one of his best poems. When Andersen published his Wonder Stories told for Children, which fixed his place in literature and in popular affection, the reviewers advised him to waste no more time over such work; and he said, "I would willingly have discontinued writing them, but they forced themselves from me." Warren says that the first chapter of the Diary of a Late Physician--the Early Struggles,--was offered by him successively to the conductors of three leading London magazines, and rejected, as "unsuitable for their pages," and "not likely to interest the public." Scott tells us that one of his nearest friends predicted the failure of Waverley. Herder, one of the most comprehensive thinkers and versatile authors of Germany, adjured Goethe not to take so unpromising a subject as Faust. Hume tried to dissuade Robertson from writing the History of Charles V. Montesquieu, upon the completion of The Spirit of Laws, which had cost him twenty years of labor, and which ran through twenty-two editions in less than as many months after its publication, submitted the manuscript to Helvetius and Saurin, who returned it with the advice not to spoil a great reputation by publishing it. Wordsworth told Robinson that before his ballads were published, Tobin implored him to leave out We are Seven, as a poem that would damn the book. It turned out to be one of the most popular. That charming and once popular Scottish story, The Annals of the Parish, by John Galt, was written ten or twelve years before the date of its publication, and anterior to the appearance of Waverley and Guy Mannering, and was rejected by the publishers of those works, with the assurance that a novel or work of fiction entirely Scottish would not take with the public. St. Pierre submitted his delightful tale, Paul and Virginia, to the criticisms of a circle of his learned friends. They told him that it was a failure; that to publish it would be a piece of foolishness; that nobody would read it. St. Pierre appealed from his learned critics to his unlearned but sympathetic and sensible housekeeper. He read--she listened, admired, and wept. He accepted her verdict, and will be remembered by one little story longer than his contemporaries by their weary tomes. Moliere made use of a person of the same class to criticise his plays. "I remember," says Boileau, "his pointing out to me several times an old servant that he had, to whom he told me he sometimes read his comedies, and he assured me that when the humorous passages did not strike her, he altered them, because he had frequently proved that such passages did not take upon the stage."