1.56. MORALITY AND GENIUS.
We see it gravely stated in a popular Metropolitan journal that "true genius goes hand in hand, necessarily, with morality." The statement is not a startlingly novel one. It has been made, probably, about sixty thousand times before. But it is untrue and foolish. We wish genius and morality were affectionate companions, but it is a fact that they are often bitter enemies. They don't necessarily coalesce any more than oil and water do! Innumerable instances may be readily produced in support of this proposition. Nobody doubts that Sheridan had genius, yet he was a sad dog. Mr. Byron, the author of Childe Harold "and other poems," was a man of genius, we think, yet Mr. Byron was a fearfully fast man. Edgar A. Poe wrote magnificent poetry and majestic prose, but he was, in private life, hardly the man for small and select tea parties. We fancy Sir Richard Steele was a man of genius, but he got disreputably drunk, and didn't pay his debts. Swift had genius—an immense lot of it—yet Swift was a cold-blooded, pitiless, bad man. The catalogue might be spun out to any length, but it were useless to do it. We don't mean to intimate that men of genius must necessarily be sots and spendthrifts—we merely speak of the fact that very many of them have been both, and in some instances much worse than both. Still we can't well see (though some think they can) how the pleasure and instruction people derive from reading the productions of these great lights is diminished because their morals were "lavishly loose." They might have written better had their private lives been purer, but of this nobody can determine for the pretty good reason that nobody knows.
So with actors. We have seen people stay away from the theater because Mrs. Grundy said the star of the evening invariably retired to his couch in a state of extreme inebriety. If the star is afflicted with a weakness of this kind, we may regret it. We may pity or censure the star. But we must still acknowledge the star's genius, and applaud it. Hence we conclude that the chronic weakness of actors no more affects the question of the propriety of patronizing theatrical representations, than the profligacy of journeymen shoemakers affects the question of the propriety of wearing boots. All of which is respectfully submitted.