Some zealous lovers of the general literature of the age, as well as declared devotees to his own great genius, frequently petitioned him for the materials wherewith to frame his biography. They assured him, that life of all things was most insecure. He might feel many years in him yet; time might go lightly by him; but in any sudden and fatal sickness, how would his last hours be embittered by the thought, that he was about to depart forever, leaving the world utterly unprovided with the knowledge of what were the precise texture and hue of the first trowsers he wore. These representations did certainly touch him in a very tender spot, not previously unknown to the schoolmaster. But when Pierre considered, that owing to his extreme youth, his own recollections of the past soon merged into all manner of half-memories and a general vagueness, he could not find it in his conscience to present such materials to the impatient biographers, especially as his chief verifying authority in these matters of his past career, was now eternally departed beyond all human appeal. His excellent nurse Clarissa had been dead four years and more. In vain a young literary friend, the well-known author of two Indexes and one Epic, to whom the subject happened to be mentioned, warmly espoused the cause of the distressed biographers; saying that however unpleasant, one must needs pay the penalty of celebrity; it was no use to stand back; and concluded by taking from the crown of his hat the proof-sheets of his own biography, which, with the most thoughtful consideration for the masses, was shortly to be published in the pamphlet form, price only a shilling.
It only the more bewildered and pained him, when still other and less delicate applicants sent him their regularly printed Biographico-Solicito Circulars, with his name written in ink; begging him to honor them and the world with a neat draft of his life, including criticisms on his own writings; the printed circular indiscriminately protesting, that undoubtedly he knew more of his own life than any other living man; and that only he who had put together the great works of Glendinning could be fully qualified thoroughly to analyze them, and cast the ultimate judgment upon their remarkable construction.
Now, it was under the influence of the humiliating emotions engendered by things like the above; it was when thus haunted by publishers, engravers, editors, critics, autograph-collectors, portrait-fanciers, biographers, and petitioning and remonstrating literary friends of all sorts; it was then, that there stole into the youthful soul of Pierre, melancholy forebodings of the utter unsatisfactoriness of all human fame; since the most ardent profferings of the most martyrizing demonstrations in his behalf,—these he was sorrowfully obliged to turn away.
And it may well be believed, that after the wonderful vital world-revelation so suddenly made to Pierre at the Meadows—a revelation which, at moments, in some certain things, fairly Timonized him—he had not failed to clutch with peculiar nervous detestation and contempt that ample parcel, containing the letters of his Biographico and other silly correspondents, which, in a less ferocious hour, he had filed away as curiosities. It was with an almost infernal grin, that he saw that particular heap of rubbish eternally quenched in the fire, and felt that as it was consumed before his eyes, so in his soul was forever killed the last and minutest undeveloped microscopic germ of that most despicable vanity to which those absurd correspondents thought to appeal.
BOOK XVIII.
PIERRE, AS A JUVENILE AUTHOR, RECONSIDERED.
I.
INASMUCH as by various indirect intimations much more than ordinary natural genius has been imputed to Pierre, it may have seemed an inconsistency, that only the merest magazine papers should have been thus far the sole productions of his mind. Nor need it be added, that, in the soberest earnest, those papers contained nothing uncommon; indeed—entirely now to drop all irony, if hitherto any thing like that has been indulged in—those fugitive things of Master Pierre’s were the veriest common-place.
It is true, as I long before said, that Nature at Saddle Meadows had very early been as a benediction to Pierre;—had blown her wind-clarion to him from the blue hills, and murmured melodious secrecies to him by her streams and her woods. But while nature thus very early and very abundantly feeds us, she is very late in tutoring us as to the proper methodization of our diet. Or,—to change the metaphor,—there are immense quarries of fine marble; but how to get it out; how to chisel it; how to construct any temple? Youth must wholly quit, then, the quarry, for awhile; and not only go forth, and get tools to use in the quarry, but must go and thoroughly study architecture. Now the quarry-discoverer is long before the stone-cutter; and the stone-cutter is long before the architect; and the architect is long before the temple; for the temple is the crown of the world.
Yes; Pierre was not only very unarchitectural at that time, but Pierre was very young, indeed, at that time. And it is often to be observed, that as in digging for precious metals in the mines, much earthy rubbish has first to be troublesomely handled and thrown out; so, in digging in one’s soul for the fine gold of genius, much dullness and common-place is first brought to light. Happy would it be, if the man possessed in himself some receptacle for his own rubbish of this sort: but he is like the occupant of a dwelling, whose refuse can not be clapped into his own cellar, but must be deposited in the street before his own door, for the public functionaries to take care of. No common-place is ever effectually got rid of, except by essentially emptying one’s self of it into a book; for once trapped in a book, then the book can be put into the fire, and all will be well. But they are not always put into the fire; and this accounts for the vast majority of miserable books over those of positive merit. Nor will any thoroughly sincere man, who is an author, ever be rash in precisely defining the period, when he has completely ridded himself of his rubbish, and come to the latent gold in his mine. It holds true, in every case, that the wiser a man is, the more misgivings he has on certain points.
It is well enough known, that the best productions of the best human intellects, are generally regarded by those intellects as mere immature freshman exercises, wholly worthless in themselves, except as initiatives for entering the great University of God after death. Certain it is, that if any inferences can be drawn from observations of the familiar lives of men of the greatest mark, their finest things, those which become the foolish glory of the world, are not only very poor and inconsiderable to themselves, but often positively distasteful; they would rather not have the book in the room. In minds comparatively inferior as compared with the above, these surmising considerations so sadden and unfit, that they become careless of what they write; go to their desks with discontent, and only remain there—victims to headache, and pain in the back—by the hard constraint of some social necessity. Equally paltry and despicable to them, are the works thus composed; born of unwillingness and the bill of the baker; the rickety offspring of a parent, careless of life herself, and reckless of the germ-life she contains. Let not the short-sighted world for a moment imagine, that any vanity lurks in such minds; only hired to appear on the stage, not voluntarily claiming the public attention; their utmost life-redness and glow is but rouge, washed off in private with bitterest tears; their laugh only rings because it is hollow; and the answering laugh is no laughter to them.