BUFFON, who consumed his mornings in his old tower of Montbard, at the end of his garden,[A] with all nature opening to him, formed all his ideas of what was passing before him from the arts of a pliant Capuchin, and the comments of a perruquier on the scandalous chronicle of the village. These humble confidants he treated as children, but the children were commanding the great man! YOUNG, whose satires give the very anatomy of human foibles, was wholly governed by his housekeeper. She thought and acted for him, which probably greatly assisted the "Night Thoughts," but his curate exposed the domestic economy of a man of genius by a satirical novel. If I am truly informed, in that gallery of satirical portraits in his "Love of Fame," YOUNG has omitted one of the most striking—his OWN! While the poet's eye was glancing from "earth to heaven," he totally overlooked the lady whom he married, and who soon became the object of his contempt; and not only his wife, but his only son, who when he returned home for the vacation from Winchester school, was only admitted into the presence of his poetical father on the first and the last day; and whose unhappy life is attributed to this unnatural neglect:[B]—a lamentable domestic catastrophe, which, I fear, has too frequently occurred amidst the ardour and occupations of literary glory. Much, too much, of the tender domesticity of life is violated by literary characters. All that lives under their eye, all that should be guided by their hand, the recluse and abstracted men of genius must leave to their own direction. But let it not be forgotten, that, if such neglect others, they also neglect themselves, and are deprived of those family enjoyments for which few men have warmer sympathies. While the literary character burns with the ambition of raising a great literary name, he is too often forbidden to taste of this domestic intercourse, or to indulge the versatile curiosity of his private amusements—for he is chained to his great labour. ROBERTSON felt this while employed on his histories, and he at length rejoiced when, after many years of devoted toil, he returned to the luxury of reading for his own amusement and to the conversation of his friends. "Such a sacrifice," observes his philosophical biographer, "must be more or less made by all who devote themselves to letters, whether with a view to emolument or to fame; nor would it perhaps be easy to make it, were it not for the prospect (seldom, alas! realised) of earning by their exertions that learned and honourable leisure which he was so fortunate as to attain."
[Footnote A: For some account of this place, see the chapter on "Literary
Residences" in vol. iii. p. 395, of "Curiosities of Literature.">[
[Footnote B: These facts are drawn from a manuscript of the late Sir Herbert Croft, who regretted that Dr. Johnson would not suffer him to give this account during the doctor's lifetime, in his Life of Young, but which it had always been his intention to have added to it.]
But men of genius have often been accused of imaginary crimes. Their very eminence attracts the lie of calumny, which tradition often conveys beyond the possibility of refutation. Sometimes they are reproached as wanting in affection, when they displease their fathers by making an obscure name celebrated. The family of DESCARTES lamented, as a blot in their escutcheon, that Descartes, who was born a gentleman, should become a philosopher; and this elevated genius was refused the satisfaction of embracing an unforgiving parent, while his dwarfish brother, with a mind diminutive as his person, ridiculed his philosophic relative, and turned to advantage his philosophic disposition. The daughter of ADDISON was educated with a perfect contempt of authors, and blushed to bear a name more illustrious than that of all the Warwicks, on her alliance to which noble family she prided herself. The children of MILTON, far from solacing the age of their blind parent, became impatient for his death, embittered his last hours with scorn and disaffection, and combined to cheat and rob him. Milton, having enriched our national poetry by two immortal epics, with patient grief blessed the single female who did not entirely abandon him, and the obscure fanatic who was pleased with his poems because they were religious. What felicities! what laurels! And now we have recently learned, that the daughter of Madame DE SÉVIGNÉ lived on ill terms with her mother, of whose enchanting genius she appears to have been insensible! The unquestionable documents are two letters hitherto cautiously secreted. The daughter was in the house of her mother when an extraordinary letter was addressed to her from the chamber of Madame de Sévigné after a sleepless night. In this she describes, with her peculiar felicity, the ill-treatment she received from the daughter she idolised; it is a kindling effusion of maternal reproach, and tenderness, and genius.[A]
[Footnote A: Lettres inédites de Madame de Sévigné, pp. 201 and 203.]
Some have been deemed disagreeable companions, because they felt the weariness of dulness, or the impertinence of intrusion; described as bad husbands, when united to women who, without a kindred feeling, had the mean art to prey upon their infirmities; or as bad fathers, because their offspring have not always reflected the moral beauty of their own page. But the magnet loses nothing of its virtue, even when the particles about it, incapable themselves of being attracted, are not acted on by its occult property.
CHAPTER XVII.
The poverty of literary men.—Poverty, a relative quality.—Of the poverty of literary men in what degree desirable.—Extreme poverty.—Task-work. —Of gratuitous works.—A project to provide against the worst state of poverty among literary men.
Poverty is a state not so fatal to genius, as it is usually conceived to be. We shall find that it has been sometimes voluntarily chosen; and that to connect too closely great fortune with great genius, creates one of those powerful but unhappy alliances, where the one party must necessarily act contrary to the interests of the other.
Poverty is a relative quality, like cold and heat, which are but the increase or the diminution in our own sensations. The positive idea must arise from comparison. There is a state of poverty reserved even for the wealthy man, the instant that he comes in hateful contact with the enormous capitalist. But there is a poverty neither vulgar nor terrifying, asking no favours and on no terms receiving any; a poverty which annihilates its ideal evils, and, becoming even a source of pride, will confer independence, that first step to genius.