CHAPTER XX.
The literary and the personal character.—The personal dispositions of an author may be the reverse of those which appear in his writings. —Erroneous conceptions of the character of distant authors.—Paradoxical appearances in the history of Genius.—Why the character of the man may be opposite to that of his writings.
Are the personal dispositions of an author discoverable in his writings, as those of an artist are imagined to appear in his works, where Michael Angelo is always great, and Raphael ever graceful?
Is the moralist a moral man? Is he malignant who publishes caustic satires? Is he a libertine who composes loose poems? And is he, whose imagination delights in terror and in blood, the very monster he paints?
Many licentious writers have led chaste lives. LA MOTHE LE VAYER wrote two works of a free nature; yet his was the unblemished life of a retired sage. BAYLE is the too faithful compiler of impurities, but he resisted the voluptuousness of the senses as much as Newton. LA FONTAINE wrote tales fertile in intrigue, yet the "bon-homme" has not left on record a single ingenious amour of his own. The Queen of NAVARRE'S Tales are gross imitations of Boccaccio's; but she herself was a princess of irreproachable habits, and had given proof of the most rigid virtue; but stories of intrigues, told in a natural style, formed the fashionable literature of the day, and the genius of the female writer was amused in becoming an historian without being an actor. FORTIGUERRA, the author of the Ricciardetto, abounds with loose and licentious descriptions, and yet neither his manners nor his personal character were stained by the offending freedom of his inventions. SMOLLETT'S character is immaculate; yet he has described two scenes which offend even in the license of imagination. COWLEY, who boasts with such gaiety of the versatility of his passion among so many mistresses, wanted even the confidence to address one. Thus, licentious writers may be very chaste persons. The imagination may be a volcano while the heart is an Alp of ice.
Turn to the moralist—there we find Seneca, a usurer of seven millions, writing on moderate desires on a table of gold. SALLUST, who so eloquently declaims against the licentiousness of the age, was repeatedly accused in the senate of public and habitual debaucheries; and when this inveigher against the spoilers of provinces attained to a remote government, he pillaged like Verres. That "DEMOSTHENES was more capable of recommending than of imitating the virtues of our ancestors," is the observation of Plutarch. LUCIAN, when young, declaimed against the friendship of the great, as another name for servitude; but when his talents procured him a situation under the emperor, he facetiously compared himself to those quacks who, themselves plagued by a perpetual cough, offer to sell an infallible remedy for one. Sir THOMAS MORE, in his "Utopia," declares that no man ought to be punished for his religion; yet he became a fierce persecutor, flogging and racking men for his own "true faith." At the moment the poet ROUSSEAU was giving versions of the Psalms, full of unction, as our Catholic neighbours express it, he was profaning the same pen with infamous epigrams; and an erotic poet of our times has composed night-hymns in churchyards with the same ardour with which he poured forth Anacreontics. Napoleon said of Bernardin St. Pierre, whose writings breathe the warm principles of humanity and social happiness in every page, that he was one of the worst private characters in France. I have heard this from other quarters; it startles one! The pathetic genius of STERNE played about his head, but never reached his heart[A]. Cardinal RICHELIEU wrote "The Perfection of a Christian, or the Life of a Christian;" yet was he an utter stranger to Gospel maxims; and FREDERICK THE GREAT, when young, published his "Anti-Machiavel," and deceived the world by the promise of a pacific reign. This military genius protested against those political arts which, he afterwards adroitly practised, uniting the lion's head with the fox's tail—and thus himself realising the political monster of Machiavel!
[Footnote A: See what is said on this subject in the article on Sterne in the "Literary Miscellanies," of the present volume.]
And thus also is it with the personal dispositions of an author, which may be quite the reverse from those which appear in his writings. Johnson would not believe that HORACE was a happy man because his verses were cheerful, any more than he could think POPE so, because the poet is continually informing us of it. It surprised Spence when Pope told him that ROWE, the tragic poet, whom he had considered so solemn a personage, "would laugh all day long, and do nothing else but laugh." Lord Kaimes says, that ARBUTHNOT must have been a great genius, for he exceeded Swift and Addison in humorous painting; although we are informed he had nothing of that peculiarity in his character. YOUNG, who is constantly contemning preferment in his writings, was all his life pining after it; and the conversation of the sombrous author of the "Night Thoughts" was of the most volatile kind, abounding with trivial puns. He was one of the first who subscribed to the assembly at Wellwyn. Mrs. Carter, who greatly admired his sublime poetry, expressing her surprise at his social converse, he replied, "Madam, there is much difference between writing and talking."
MOLIERE, on the contrary, whose humour is so perfectly comic, and even ludicrous, was thoughtful and serious, and even melancholy. His strongly-featured physiognomy exhibits the face of a great tragic, rather than of a great comic, poet. Boileau called Molière "The Contemplative Man." Those who make the world laugh often themselves laugh the least. A famous and witty harlequin of France was overcome with hypochondriasm, and consulted a physician, who, after inquiring about his malady, told his miserable patient, that he knew of no other medicine for him than to take frequent doses of Carlin—"I am Carlin himself," exclaimed the melancholy man, in despair. BURTON, the pleasant and vivacious author of "The Anatomy of Melancholy," of whom it is noticed, that he could in an interval of vapours raise laughter in any company, in his chamber was "mute and mopish," and at last was so overcome by that intellectual disorder, which he appeared to have got rid of by writing his volume, that it is believed he closed his life in a fit of melancholy.[A]
[Footnote A: It is reported of him that his only mode of alleviating his melancholy was by walking from his college at Oxford to the bridge, to listen to the rough jokes of the bargemen.]
Could one have imagined that the brilliant wit, the luxuriant raillery, and the fine and deep sense of PASCAL, could have combined with the most opposite qualities—the hypochondriasm and bigotry of an ascetic? ROCHEFOUCAULD, in private life, was a conspicuous example of all those moral qualities of which he seemed to deny the existence, and exhibited in this respect a striking contrast to the Cardinal de Retz, who has presumed to censure him for his want of faith in the reality of virtue; but DE RETZ himself was the unbeliever in disinterested virtue. This great genius was one of those pretended patriots destitute of a single one of the virtues for which he was the clamorous advocate of faction.
When Valincour attributed the excessive tenderness in the tragedies of RACINE to the poet's own impassioned character, the son amply showed that his father was by no means the slave of love. RACINE never wrote a single love-poem, nor even had a mistress; and his wife had never read his tragedies, for poetry was not her delight. Racine's motive for making love the constant source of action in his tragedies, was from the principle which has influenced so many poets, who usually conform to the prevalent taste of the times. In the court of a young monarch it was necessary that heroes should be lovers; Corneille had nobly run in one career, and Racine could not have existed as a great poet had he not rivalled him in an opposite one. The tender RACINE was no lover; but he was a subtle and epigrammatic observer, before whom his convivial friends never cared to open their minds; and the caustic BOILEAU truly said of him, "RACINE is far more malicious than I am."
ALFIERI speaks of his mistress as if he lived with her in the most unreserved familiarity; the reverse was the case. And the gratitude and affection with which he describes his mother, and which she deserved, entered so little into his habitual feelings, that, after their early separation, he never saw her but once, though he often passed through the country where she resided.
JOHNSON has composed a beautiful Rambler, describing the pleasures which result from the influence of good-humour; and somewhat remarkably says, "Without good-humour learning and bravery can be only formidable, and confer that superiority which swells the heart of the lion in the desert, where he roars without reply, and ravages without resistance." He who could so finely discover the happy influence of this pleasing quality was himself a stranger to it, and "the roar and the ravage" were familiar to our lion. Men of genius frequently substitute their beautiful imagination for spontaneous and natural sentiment. It is not therefore surprising if we are often erroneous in the conception we form of the personal character of a distant author. KLOPSTOCK, the votary of the muse of Zion, so astonished and warmed the sage BODMER, that he invited the inspired bard to his house: but his visitor shocked the grave professor, when, instead of a poet rapt in silent meditation, a volatile youth leaped out of the chaise, who was an enthusiast for retirement only when writing verses. An artist, whose pictures exhibit a series of scenes of domestic tenderness, awakening all the charities of private life, I have heard, participated in them in no other way than on his canvas. EVELYN, who has written in favour of active life, "loved and lived in retirement;"[A] while Sir GEORGE MACKENZIE, who had been continually in the bustle of business, framed a eulogium on solitude. We see in MACHIAVEL'S code of tyranny, of depravity, and of criminal violence, a horrid picture of human nature; but this retired philosopher was a friend to the freedom of his country; he participated in none of the crimes he had recorded, but drew up these systemized crimes "as an observer, not as a criminal." DRUMMOND, whose sonnets still retain the beauty and the sweetness and the delicacy of the most amiable imagination, was a man of a harsh irritable temper, and has been thus characterised:—
Testie Drummond could not speak for fretting.
[Footnote A: Since this was written the correspondence of EVELYN has appeared, by which we find that he apologised to Cowley for having published this very treatise, which seemed to condemn that life of study and privacy to which they were both equally attached; and confesses that the whole must be considered as a mere sportive effusion, requesting that Cowley would not suppose its principles formed his private opinions. Thus LEIBNITZ, we are told, laughed at the fanciful system revealed in his Theodicée, and acknowledged that he never wrote it in earnest; that a philosopher is not always obliged to write seriously, and that to invent an hypothesis is only a proof of the force of imagination.]
Thus authors and artists may yield no certain indication of their personal characters in their works. Inconstant men will write on constancy, and licentious minds may elevate themselves into poetry and piety. We should be unjust to some of the greatest geniuses if the extraordinary sentiments which they put into the mouths of their dramatic personages are maliciously to be applied to themselves. EURIPIDES was accused of atheism when he introduced a denier of the gods on the stage. MILTON has been censured by CLARKE for the impiety of Satan; and an enemy of SHAKSPEARE might have reproached him for his perfect delineation of the accomplished villain Iago, as it was said that Dr. MOORE was hurt in the opinions of some by his odious Zeluco. CREBILLON complains of this:—"They charge me with all the iniquities of Atreus, and they consider me in some places as a wretch with whom it is unfit to associate; as if all which the mind invents must be derived from the heart." This poet offers a striking instance of the little alliance existing between the literary and personal dispositions of an author. CREBILLON, who exulted, on his entrance into the French Academy, that he had never tinged his pen with the gall of satire, delighted to strike on the most harrowing string of the tragic lyre. In his Atreus the father drinks the blood of his son; in his Rhadamistus the son expires under the hand of the father; in his Electra, the son assassinates the mother. A poet is a painter of the soul, but a great artist is not therefore a bad man.
MONTAIGNE appears to have been sensible of this fact in the literary character. Of authors, he says, he likes to read their little anecdotes and private passions:—"Car j'ai une singulière curiosité de connaître l'âme et les naïfs jugemens de mes auteurs. Il faut bien juger leur suffisance, mais non pas leurs moeurs, ni eux, par cette montre de leurs écrits qu'ils étalent au théatre du monde." Which may be thus translated: "For I have a singular curiosity to know the soul and simple opinions of my authors. We must judge of their ability, but not of their manners, nor of themselves, by that show of their writings which they display on the theatre of the world." This is very just; are we yet sure, however, that the simplicity of this old favourite of Europe might not have been as much a theatrical gesture as the sentimentality of Sterne? The great authors of the Port-Royal Logic have raised severe objections to prove that MONTAIGNE was not quite so open in respect to those simple details which he imagined might diminish his personal importance with his readers. He pretends that he reveals all his infirmities and weaknesses, while he is perpetually passing himself off for something more than he is. He carefully informs us that he has "a page," the usual attendant of an independent gentleman, and lives in an old family château; when the fact was, that his whole revenue did not exceed six thousand livres, a state beneath mediocrity. He is also equally careful not to drop any mention of his having a clerk with a bag; for he was a counsellor of Bordeaux, but affected the gentleman and the soldier. He trumpets himself forth for having been mayor of Bordeaux, as this offered an opportunity of telling us that he succeeded Marshal Biron, and resigned it to Marshal Matignon. Could he have discovered that any marshal had been a lawyer he would not have sunk that part of his life. Montaigne himself has said, "that in forming a judgment of a man's life, particular regard should be paid to his behaviour at the end of it;" and he more than once tells us that the chief study of his life is to die calm and silent; and that he will plunge himself headlong and stupidly into death, as into an obscure abyss, which swallows one up in an instant; that to die was the affair of a moment's suffering, and required no precepts. He talked of reposing on the "pillow of doubt." But how did this great philosopher die? He called for the more powerful opiates of the infallible church! The mass was performed in his chamber, and, in rising to embrace it, his hands dropped and failed him; thus, as Professor Dugald Stewart observes on this philosopher—"He expired in performing what his old preceptor, Buchanan, would not have scrupled to describe as an act of idolatry."
We must not then consider that he who paints vice with energy is therefore vicious, lest we injure an honourable man; nor must we imagine that he who celebrates virtue is therefore virtuous, for we may then repose on a heart which knowing the right pursues the wrong.
These paradoxical appearances in the history of genius present a curious moral phenomenon. Much must be attributed to the plastic nature of the versatile faculty itself. Unquestionably many men of genius have often resisted the indulgence of one talent to exercise another with equal power; and some, who have solely composed sermons, could have touched on the foibles of society with the spirit of Horace or Juvenal. BLACKSTONE and Sir WILLIAM JONES directed that genius to the austere studies of law and philology, which might have excelled in the poetical and historical character. So versatile is this faculty of genius, that its possessors are sometimes uncertain of the manner in which they shall treat their subject, whether gravely or ludicrously. When BREBOEUF, the French translator of the Pharsalia of Lucan, had completed the first book as it now appears, he at the same time composed a burlesque version, and sent both to the great arbiter of taste in that day, to decide which the poet should continue. The decision proved to be difficult. Are there not writers who, with all the vehemence of genius, by adopting one principle can make all things shrink into the pigmy form of ridicule, or by adopting another principle startle us by the gigantic monsters of their own exaggerated imagination? On this principle, of the versatility of the faculty, a production of genius is a piece of art which, wrought up to its full effect with a felicity of manner acquired by taste and habit, is merely the result of certain arbitrary combinations of the mind.
Are we then to reduce the works of a man of genius to a mere sport of his talents—a game in which he is only the best player? Can he whose secret power raises so many emotions in our breasts be without any in his own? A mere actor performing a part? Is he unfeeling when he is pathetic, indifferent when he is indignant? Is he an alien to all the wisdom and virtue he inspires? No! were men of genius themselves to assert this, and it is said some incline so to do, there is a more certain conviction than their misconceptions, in our own consciousness, which for ever assures us, that deep feelings and elevated thoughts can alone spring from those who feel deeply and think nobly.
In proving that the character of the man may be very opposite to that of his writings, we must recollect that the habits of the life may be contrary to the habits of the mind.[A] The influence of their studies over men of genius is limited. Out of the ideal world, man is reduced to be the active creature of sensation. An author has, in truth, two distinct characters: the literary, formed by the habits of his study; the personal, by the habits of his situation. GRAY, cold, effeminate, and timid in his personal, was lofty and awful in his literary character. We see men of polished manners and bland affections, who, in grasping a pen, are thrusting a poniard; while others in domestic life with the simplicity of children and the feebleness of nervous affections, can shake the senate or the bar with the vehemence of their eloquence and the intrepidity of their spirit. The writings of the famous BAPTISTA PORTA are marked by the boldness of his genius, which formed a singular contrast with the pusillanimity of his conduct when menaced or attacked. The heart may be feeble, though the mind is strong. To think boldly may be the habit of the mind, to act weakly may be the habit of the constitution.
[Footnote A: Nothing is more delightful to me in my researches on the literary character than when I find in persons of unquestionable and high genius the results of my own discoveries. This circumstance has frequently happened to confirm my principles. Long after this was published, Madame de Staël made this important confession in her recent work, "Dix Années d'Exil," p. 154. "Je ne pouvais me dissimuler que je n'étais pas une persoune courageuse; j'ai de la hardiesse dans l'imagination, mais de la timidité dans la caractère.">[
However the personal character may contrast with that of their genius, still are the works themselves genuine, and exist as realities for us—and were so, doubtless, to the composers themselves in the act of composition. In the calm of study, a beautiful imagination may convert him whose morals are corrupt into an admirable moralist, awakening feelings which yet may be cold in the business of life: as we have shown that the phlegmatic can excite himself into wit, and the cheerful man delight in "Night Thoughts." SALLUST, the corrupt Sallust, might retain the most sublime conceptions of the virtues which were to save the Republic; and STERNE, whose heart was not so susceptible in ordinary occurrences, while he was gradually creating incident after incident and touching successive emotions, in the stories of Le Fevre and Maria, might have thrilled—like some of his readers. Many have mourned over the wisdom or the virtue they contemplated, mortified at their own infirmity. Thus, though there may be no identity between the book and the man, still for us an author is ever an abstract being, and, as one of the Fathers said—"A dead man may sin dead, leaving books that make others sin." An author's wisdom or his folly does not die with him. The volume, not the author, is our companion, and is for us a real personage, performing before us whatever it inspires—"He being dead, yet speaketh." Such is the vitality of a book!