[Footnote A: His stories of the wealth and population of China, which he described as consisting of millions obtained for him the nickname of Marco Milione among the Venetians and other small Italian states, who were unable to comprehend the greatness of his truthful narratives of Eastern travel. Upon his death-bed he was adjured by his friends to retract his statements, which he indignantly refused. It was long after ere his truthfulness was established by other travellers; the Venetian populace gave his house the name La Corte di Milioni: and a vulgar caricature of the great traveller was always introduced in their carnivals, who was termed Marco Milione; and delighted them with the most absurd stories, in, which everything was computed by millions.—ED.]
HARVEY, though his life was prolonged to his eightieth year, hardly lived to see his great discovery of the circulation of the blood established: no physician adopted it; and when at length it was received, one party attempted to rob Harvey of the honour of the discovery, while another asserted that it was so obvious, that they could only express their astonishment that it had ever escaped observation. Incredulity and envy are the evil spirits which have often dogged great inventors to their tomb, and there only have vanished.—But I seem writing the "calamities of authors," and have only begun the catalogue.
The reputation of a writer of taste is subject to more difficulties than any other. Similar was the fate of the finest ode-writers in our poetry. On their publication, the odes of COLLINS could find no readers; and those of GRAY, though ushered into the reading world by the fashionable press of Walpole, were condemned as failures. When RACINE produced his "Athalie," it was not at all relished: Boileau indeed declared that he understood these matters better than the public, and prophesied that the public would return to it: they did so; but it was sixty years afterwards; and Racine died without suspecting that "Athalie" was his masterpiece. I have heard one of our great poets regret that he had devoted so much of his life to the cultivation of his art, which arose from a project made in the golden vision of his youth: "at a time," said he, "when I thought that the fountain could never be dried up."—"Your baggage will reach posterity," was observed.—"There is much to spare," was the answer.
Every day we may observe, of a work of genius, that those parts which have all the raciness of the soil, and as such are most liked by its admirers, are those which are the most criticised. Modest critics shelter themselves under that general amnesty too freely granted, that tastes are allowed to differ; but we should approximate much nearer to the truth, if we were to say, that but few of mankind are prepared to relish the beautiful with that enlarged taste which comprehends all the forms of feeling which genius may assume; forms which may be necessarily associated with defects. A man of genius composes in a state of intellectual emotion, and the magic of his style consists in the movements of his soul; but the art of conveying those movements is far separated from the feeling which inspires them. The idea in the mind is not always found under the pen, any more than the artist's conception can always breathe in his pencil. Like FIAMINGO'S image, which he kept polishing till his friend exclaimed, "What perfection would you have?"—"Alas!" exclaimed the sculptor, "the original I am labouring to come up to is in my head, but not yet in my hand."
The writer toils, and repeatedly toils, to throw into our minds that sympathy with which we hang over the illusion of his pages, and become himself. ARIOSTO wrote sixteen different ways the celebrated stanza descriptive of a tempest, as appears by his MSS. at Ferrara; and the version he preferred was the last of the sixteen. We know that PETRARCH made forty-four alterations of a single verse: "whether for the thought, the expression, or the harmony, it is evident that as many operations in the heart, the head, or the ear of the poet occurred," observes a man of genius, Ugo Foscolo. Quintilian and Horace dread the over-fondness of an author for his compositions: alteration is not always improvement. A picture over-finished fails in its effect. If the hand of the artist cannot leave it, how much beauty may it undo! yet still he is lingering, still strengthening the weak, still subduing the daring, still searching for that single idea which awakens so many in the minds of others, while often, as it once happened, the dash of despair hangs the foam on the horse's nostrils. I have known a great sculptor, who for twenty years delighted himself with forming in his mind the nymph his hand was always creating. How rapturously he beheld her! what inspiration! what illusion! Alas! the last five years spoiled the beautiful which he had once reached, and could not stop and finish!
The art of composition, indeed, is of such slow attainment, that a man of genius, late in life, may discover how its secret conceals itself in the habit; how discipline consists in exercise, how perfection comes from experience, and how unity is the last effort of judgment. When Fox meditated on a history which should last with the language, he met his evil genius in this new province. The rapidity and the fire of his elocution were extinguished by a pen unconsecrated by long and previous study; he saw that he could not class with the great historians of every great people; he complained, while he mourned over the fragment of genius which, after such zealous preparation, he dared not complete. CURRAN, an orator of vehement eloquence, often strikingly original, when late in life he was desirous of cultivating literary composition, unaccustomed to its more gradual march, found a pen cold, and destitute of every grace. ROUSSEAU has glowingly described the ceaseless inquietude by which he obtained the seductive eloquence of his style; and has said, that with whatever talent a man may be born, the art of writing is not easily obtained. The existing manuscripts of ROUSSEAU display as many erasures as those of Ariosto or Petrarch; they show his eagerness to dash down his first thoughts, and the art by which he raised them to the impassioned style of his imagination. The memoir of GIBBON was composed seven or nine times, and, after all, was left unfinished; and BUFFON tells us that he wrote his "Epoques de la Nature" eighteen times before it satisfied his taste. BURNS'S anxiety in finishing his poems was great; "all my poetry," said he, "is the effect of easy composition, but of laborious correction."
POPE, when employed on the Iliad, found it not only occupy his thoughts by day, but haunting his dreams by night, and once wished himself hanged, to get rid of Homer: and that he experienced often such literary agonies, witness his description of the depressions and elevations of genius:
Who pants for glory, finds but short repose;
A breath revives him, or a breath o'erthrows!
When ROMNEY undertook to commence the first subject for the Shakspeare Gallery, in the rapture of enthusiasm, amidst the sublime and pathetic labouring in his whole mind, arose the terror of failure. The subject chosen was "The Tempest;" and, as Hayley truly observes, it created many a tempest in the fluctuating spirits of Romney. The vehement desire of that perfection which genius conceives, and cannot always execute, held a perpetual contest with that dejection of spirits which degrades the unhappy sufferer, and casts him, grovelling among the mean of his class. In a national work, a man of genius pledges his honour to the world for its performance; but to redeem that pledge, there is a darkness in the uncertain issue, and he is risking his honour for ever. By that work he will always be judged, for public failures are never forgotten, and it is not then a party, but the public itself, who become his adversaries. With ROMNEY it was "a fever of the mad;" and his friends could scarcely inspire him with sufficient courage to proceed with his arduous picture, which exercised his imagination and his pencil for several years. I have heard that he built a painting-room purposely for this picture; and never did an anchorite pour fourth a more fervent orison to Heaven, than Romney when this labour was complete. He had a fine genius, with all its solitary feelings, but he was uneducated, and incompetent even to write a letter; yet on this occasion, relieved from his intense anxiety under so long a work, he wrote one of the most eloquent. It is a document in the history of genius, and reveals all those feelings which are here too faintly described.[A] I once heard an amiable author, whose literary career has perhaps not answered the fond hopes of his youth, half in anger and in love, declare that he would retire to some solitude, where, if any one would follow him, he would found a new order—the order of THE DISAPPOINTED.
[Footnote A: "My DEAR FRIEND,—Your kindness in rejoicing so heartily at the birth of my picture has given me great satisfaction.