Part 18

Many a famous name, it has been truly said, has been indebted for its brightest lustre to things which were flung off as a pastime, or composed as an irksome duty, whilst the performances upon which the author most relied or prided himself have fallen still-born or been neglected by posterity. Thus Petrarch, who trusted to his Latin poems for immortality, mainly owes it to the Sonnets, which he regarded as ephemeral displays of feeling or fancy of the hour. Thus Chesterfield, the orator, the statesman, the Maecenas and Petronius of his age, and (above all) the first viceroy who ventured on justice to Ireland, is floated down to our times by his familiar Letters to his Son. Thus Johnson, the Colossus of Literature, were he to look up or down (to adopt the more polite hypothesis), would hardly believe his eyes or ears, on finding that Bozzy, the snubbed and suppressed, yet ever elastic and rebounding Bozzy, is the prop, the bulwark, the key-stone of his fame; "the salt which keeps it sweet, the vitality which preserves it from putrefaction." We have it upon the authority of old Thomas Fuller, that "when a French printer complained that he was utterly undone by printing a solid, serious book of Rabelais concerning physic, Rabelais, to make him recompense, made that his jesting, scurrilous work, which repaired the printer's loss with advantage." "It was impossible to tell beforehand," said Northcote to Hazlitt, "what would hit the public. You might as well pretend to say what ticket would turn up a prize in the lottery. It was not chance neither, but some unforeseen coincidence between the subject and the prevailing taste, that you could not possibly be a judge of. I had once painted two pictures--one of a Fortune-teller (a boy with a monkey) and another called The Visit to the Grandmother; and Raphael Smith came to me and wanted to engrave them, being willing to give a handsome sum for the first, but only to do the last as an experiment. He sold ten times as many of the last as of the first, and told me that there were not less than five different impressions done of it in Paris; and once, when I went to his house, to get one to complete a set of engravings after my designs, they asked me six guineas for a proof impression! This was too much, but I was delighted that I could not afford to pay for my own work, from the value that was set upon it." Cervantes, who was fifty-eight when he published the first part of Don Quixote, had, like Fielding, "written a considerable number of indifferent dramas which gave no indication of the immortal work which afterward astonished and delighted the world. He was the author of several tales, for which even his subsequent fame can procure very few readers, and would certainly have been forgotten if the lustre of his masterpiece had not shed its light upon everything which belonged to him. It was not till he was verging upon three-score that he hit upon the happy plan which was to exhibit his genius, and which nothing previously sufficed to display. Fielding was equally ignorant of his province. Writing for a subsistence, trying everything by turns, having the strongest interest in discovering how he could lay out his powers to the best advantage, he mistook his road, and only found it by chance. If Pamela had never existed, it is more than possible that English literature might have wanted Joseph Andrews, Tom Jones, and Amelia." Scott's conversation about his own productions, as recorded by Moore in his Diary, is curious, showing that he rather stumbled upon his talent than cultivated it originally. "Had begun Waverley long before, and then thrown it by, until having occasion for some money (to help his brother, I think), he bethought himself of it, but could not find the MSS." When he did, "made 3,000 pounds by Waverley."

It is set down as a striking commentary upon the taste of his contemporaries that Hogarth's six pictures of Marriage a la Mode were sold for nineteen pounds and six shillings, though fifty years afterward they brought one thousand three hundred and eighty pounds. The manuscript of Robinson Crusoe ran through the whole trade, nor would any one print it, though the writer, De Foe, was in good repute as an author. The bookseller who risked the publication was a speculator, not remarkable for discernment. The Vicar of Wakefield lay unpublished for two years after the publisher, Newberry, was importuned by Dr. Johnson to pay sixty pounds for it to save the author from distress. Paradise Lost made a narrow escape. Sterne found it hard to find a publisher for Tristram Shandy. The sermon in it, he says in the preface to his Sermons, was printed by itself some years before, but could find neither purchasers nor readers. When it was inserted in his eccentric work, with the advantage of Trim's fine reading, it met with a most favorable reception, and occasioned the others to be collected. Cowper's first volume of poems was published by Johnson, and fell dead from the press. Author and publisher were to incur equal loss. Cowper begged Johnson to forgive him his debt, and this was done. In return, Cowper sent Johnson his Task, saying: "You behaved generously to me on a former occasion; if you think it safe to publish this new work, I make you a present of it." Johnson published it. It became popular. The former volume was then sold with it. The profits to the publisher, it is said, were at least fifty thousand dollars. Cooper says that the first volume of The Spy was actually printed several months before he felt a sufficient inducement to write a line of the second. As the second volume, he says, was slowly printing, from manuscript that was barely dry when it went into the compositor's hands, the publisher intimated that the work might grow to a length that would consume the profits. To set his mind at rest, the last chapter was actually written, printed, and paged, several weeks before the chapters which preceded it were even thought of. The Culprit Fay, we are told by the biographer of Drake, was composed hastily among the Highlands of the Hudson, in the summer of 1819. The author was walking with some friends on a warm moonlight evening, when one of the party remarked that it would be difficult to write a fairy poem, purely imaginative, without the aid of human characters. When the party was reassembled two or three days afterward, The Culprit Fay was read to them, nearly as it is now printed. Drake placed a very modest estimate on his own productions, and it is believed that but a small portion of them have been preserved. When on his death-bed, a friend inquired of him what disposition he would have made of his poems. "Oh, burn them," he replied; "they are quite valueless." Written copies of a number of them were, however, in circulation, and some had been incorrectly printed in the periodicals; and for this reason was published the single collection of them which has appeared. A mere rumor that Erasmus' Colloquies had got into the Index Expurgatorius, sold an impression of four-and-twenty thousand copies, and made the fortune of the publisher. Fenelon's Adventures of Telemachus, which had hitherto remained in manuscript, was given to the world by the dishonesty of a servant who had been employed to have the work copied, but who sold it to a bookseller without disclosing the author's name. The king, having been told that it was from the pen of the Archbishop of Cambrai, and probably sharing an unfounded suspicion then current, that the book was a satire on the court, took measures to suppress it; but a few copies escaped seizure, and an imperfect edition was printed in Holland in 1699. Others followed rapidly, and for a long time the press was unable to keep up with the public demand. Sir Matthew Hale wrote four volumes in folio, "three of which I have read," says Baxter, "against atheism, Sadduceeism, and infidelity, to prove first the Deity, and then the immortality of man's soul, and then the truth of Christianity and the Holy Scripture, answering the infidel's objections against Scripture. It is strong and masculine, only too tedious for impatient readers. He said he wrote it only at vacant hours in his circuits, to regulate his meditations, finding, that while he wrote down what he thought on, his thoughts were the easier kept close to work, and kept in a method. But I could not persuade him to publish them."

One is tempted to speculate upon the books that never were published. As some of the best books have been written in prison or captivity, so some of like quality may have perished with their unfortunate authors. If so many great authors, like Dryden and Cervantes, and Le Sage and Spenser, almost starved, barely procuring a pittance for their published works, how many good works may not, in despair, have been destroyed by their authors. If so many great works were accidentally discovered in manuscript, how many as great may have perished in that form. "The Romans wrote their books either on parchment or on paper made of the Egyptian papyrus. The latter, being the cheapest, was, of course, the most commonly used. But after the communication between Europe and Egypt was broken off, on account of the latter having been seized upon by the Saracens, the papyrus was no longer in use in Italy or in other European countries. They were obliged, on that account, to write all their books upon parchment, and as its price was high, books became extremely rare, and of great value. We may judge of the scarcity of materials for writing them from one circumstance. There still remain several manuscripts of the eighth, ninth, and following centuries, written on parchment, from which some former writing had been erased, in order to substitute a new composition in its place. In this manner, it is probable, several books of the ancients perished. A book of Livy, or of Tacitus, might be erased, to make room for the legendary tale of a saint, or the superstitious prayers of a missal." Truly, a resurrection of the unpublished, to say the least, would expose an interesting mass of intellectual novelties. The book-tasters, wise as they think themselves, are very far from being unerring in their estimates of brain values, and better things than they have approved may have gone into the basket. The weather or bad chirography may have damned many a production of genius. The rejection of an article for a quarterly may have snuffed out the most promising talents. It is possible that some charitable reformer may have discovered a way to fuse sects and harmonize Christians, but was prevented from showing it to the world by the stupidity of printers!

The most wonderful and sublime things in nature and art are rarely appreciated at first view. Every visitor is disappointed at the first sight of Niagara. Mountains are not appreciated till we have dwelt long among them. Goethe was at first disturbed and confused by the impression which Switzerland produced on him. Only after repeated visits, he said, only in later years, when he visited those mountains as a mineralogist merely, could he converse with them at his ease. The sea is but a dead, monotonous waste, till we come to feel its immensity and power. London is but a great town till we have wandered in it, lost ourselves in it, studied it, in fine, till we have found it too great to be comprehended, when its marvelous proportions are expanded into a nation, and it is accepted as one of the great powers of the world. "The longer one stays in London," said a temporary resident, "the more it seems a mockery to say anything about it." "I remember," says an American traveler, "having read a glorious description of Milan cathedral, and a few days later I saw the temple myself. To my first view it was only a large marble church, fronting on an unpleasant square, and adorned with indistinct spires. I was shocked with disappointment. But when I spent a fortnight at Milan, and studied the cathedral in every light and through every part, I then saw that the description was far inadequate to the actuality." "When the visitor," says Hillard, "has passed into the interior of St. Peter's, and so far recovered from the first rush of tumultuous sensations which crowd upon him as to be able to look about him, he will be struck with, and, if not forewarned, disappointed at, the apparent want of magnitude." But he will find that the windows of the church are never opened, it is so immense as well as so complete; that it has its own atmosphere, and needs no supply from the world without; that the most zealous professor of ventilation would admit that there was no work for him to do here. "When we dream of the climate of heaven, we make it warmth without heat, and coolness without cold, like that of St. Peter's." It has been mentioned as a remarkable quality in Coleridge's mind that edifices excited little interest in him. "On his return from Italy, and after having resided for some time in Rome, I remember," says Cottle, "his describing to me the state of society; the characters of the popes and the cardinals; the gorgeous ceremonies, with the superstitions of the people; but not one word did he utter concerning St. Peter's, the Vatican, or the numerous antiquities of the place. I remember to have been with Mr. Coleridge at York on our journey into Durham, to see Mr. Wordsworth. After breakfast at the inn, perceiving Mr. C. engaged, I went out alone, to see the York minster, being in the way detained in a bookseller's shop. In the meantime, Mr. C., having missed me, set off in search of me. Supposing it probable that I was gone to the minster, he went up to the door of that magnificent structure, and inquired of the porter, whether such an individual as myself had gone in there. Being answered in the negative, he had no further curiosity, not even looking into the interior, but turned away to pursue his search! so that Mr. C. left York without beholding, or wishing to behold, the chief attraction of the city, or being at all conscious that he had committed, by his neglect, high treason against all architectural beauty!" Northcote mentioned a conceited painter of the name of Edwards, who went with Romney to Rome, and when they got into the Sistine chapel, turning round to him, said, "Egad, George! we're bit!" "Raphael's Transfiguration," says Willis, "is agreed to be the finest picture in the world. I had made up my mind to the same opinion from the engravings of it, but was painfully disappointed in the picture. I looked at it from every corner of the room, and asked the custodian three times if he was sure this was the original. The color offended my eye, blind as Raphael's name should make it, and I left the room with a sigh, and an unsettled faith in my own taste, that made me seriously unhappy. My complacency was restored a few hours after on hearing that the wonder was entirely in the drawing--the colors having quite changed with time." Sir Joshua Reynolds says he was informed by the keeper of the Vatican that many of those whom he had conducted through the various apartments of that edifice, when about to be dismissed, had asked for the works of Raphael, and would not believe that they had already passed through the rooms where they are preserved. "I remember very well," he says, "my own disappointment when I first visited the Vatican. All the indigested notions of painting which I had brought with me from England were to be totally done away with and eradicated from my mind. It was necessary, as it is expressed on a very solemn occasion, that I should become as a little child. Nor does painting in this respect differ from other arts. A just and poetical taste, and the acquisition of a nice, discriminative musical ear, are equally the work of time. Even the eye, however perfect in itself, is often unable to distinguish between the brilliancy of two diamonds, though the experienced jeweler will be amazed at its blindness." "The musician by profession," said Goethe, "hears, in an orchestral performance, every instrument, and every single tone, whilst one unacquainted with the art is wrapped up in the massive effect of the whole. A man merely bent upon enjoyment sees in a green or flowery meadow only a pleasant plain, whilst the eye of a botanist discovers an endless detail of the most varied plants and grasses." Gainsborough says that an artist knows an original from a copy, by observing the touch of the pencil; for there will be the same individuality in the strokes of the brush as in the strokes of a pen. "Those who can at once distinguish between different sorts of handwriting are yet often astonished at the possession of the faculty when it is exercised upon pictures. No engraver, in like manner, can counterfeit the style of another. His brethren of the craft would not only immediately detect the forgery, but would recognize the distinctive strokes of the forger."

Hogarth and Reynolds, it is said, could not do each other justice. Hogarth ranked Reynolds very low as a painter. Johnson said "Tristram Shandy did not last;" and Goldsmith noticed the faults of Sterne only. They may each have looked with some feeling of envy to the far greater immediate success than either of themselves had enjoyed; but it does not follow that Hogarth, Johnson, and Goldsmith were so dishonest as to deny the existence of the excellences they saw. Unfortunately, persons engaged in the same departments of literature or art generally dislike one another. It is one of the drawbacks of genius. Voltaire and Rousseau hated each other; Fielding despised Richardson; Petrarch, Dante; Michel Angelo sneered at Raphael; but fortunately their reputations did not depend upon one another. Envy and hatred aside, it was impossible for them to judge one another justly; they were too near. A painter once confessed to Dr. Johnson that no professor of the art ever loved a person who pursued the same craft. The whole class of underlings who fed at the table of Smollett, and existed by his patronage, traduced his character and abused his works; and, as they were no less treacherous to one another than to their benefactor, each was eager to betray the rest to him. At the beginning of the last century, says Southey, books which are now justly regarded as among the treasures of English literature, which are the delight of the old and the young, the learned and the unlearned, the high and the low, were then spoken of with contempt; the Pilgrim's Progress as fit only for the ignorant and the vulgar, Robinson Crusoe for children; if any one but an angler condescended to look into Izaak Walton, it must be for the sake of finding something to laugh at. It will never be forgotten, in the history of English poetry, that, with a generous and just though impatient sense of indignation, Collins, as soon as his means enabled him, repaid the publisher of his poems the price which he had received for their copyright, indemnified him for the loss in the adventure, and committed the remainder, which was by far the greater part of the impression, to the flames. But it should also be remembered that in the course of one generation these poems, without any adventitious aids to bring them into notice, were acknowledged to be the best of their kind in the language. The very existence of the works of William Dunbar has been mentioned as a signal proof of the immortality of real merit; for we know not at what precise time he was born, nor when he died, and his very name is not, with one solitary exception, to be met with in the whole compass of English literature for two hundred years; nor was it till after the lapse of three centuries that his poems were collected and published--to secure him the reputation, among his own countrymen, of being one of the greatest of Scotland's poets. This neglect or inability to acknowledge contemporary genius was humorously hinted at by Coleridge in one of his lectures. The lecture being extemporaneous, he now and then took up scraps of paper on which he had noted the leading points of his subject, and made use of books that were about him for quotation. On turning to one of these (a work of his own), he said, "As this is a secret which I confided to the public a year or two ago, and which, to do the public justice, has been very faithfully kept, I may be permitted to read you a passage from it."

Tom Taylor's anecdote of Bott, the barrister, illustrates the uncertainty of literary recognition. Bott occupied the rooms opposite to Goldsmith's in Brick Court; he lent the needy author money, drove him in his gig to the Shoemakers' Paradise, eight miles down the Edgeware Road, and occasionally periled both their necks in a ditch. Reynolds painted this good-natured barrister, who runs a better chance of reaching posterity in that gig of his alongside of Goldsmith, than by virtue of the Treatise on the Poor Laws which Goldsmith is said to have written up for him. And as if the uncertainty of literary fame were not great enough, authors themselves sometimes strive to increase it by most extraordinary means. You remember Southey's attempt to hoax Theodore Hook regarding the authorship of The Doctor. At Hook's death a packet of letters was found addressed to him, as the author of The Doctor, and acknowledging presentation copies--one from Southey among the rest. They had been forwarded from the publisher, and were intended, it is presumed, if they were intended for anything, as a trap for Hook's vanity. Sydney Smith positively denied all connection with the Plymley Letters in one edition, and published them in a collection of his acknowledged works some months after. Sir Walter Scott, being taxed at a dinner-table as the author of Old Mortality, not only denied being the author, but said to Murray, the publisher, who was present, "In order to convince you that I am not the author, I will review the book for you in the Quarterly,"--which he actually did, and Murray retained the manuscript after Sir Walter's death.