[Footnote A: On this passage I find a remarkable manuscript note by Lord Byron:—"It would have pained me more that 'the proprietor' should have 'often wished to make alterations, than it could give pleasure that the rest of Arezzo rose against his right (for right he had); the depreciation of the lowest of mankind is more painful than the applause of the highest is pleasing; the sting of a scorpion is more in torture than the possession of anything could be in rapture.">[
In the village of Certaldo is still shown the house of BOCCACCIO; and on a turret are seen the arms of the Medici, which they had sculptured there, with an inscription alluding to a small house and a name which filled the world; and in Ferrara, the small house which ARIOSTO built was purchased, to be preserved, by the municipality, and there they still show the poet's study; and under his bust a simple but affecting tribute to genius records that "Ludovico Ariosto in this apartment wrote." Two hundred and eighty years after the death of the divine poet it was purchased by the podesta, with the money of the commune, that "the public veneration may be maintained."[A] "Foreigners," says Anthony Wood of MILTON, "have, out of pure devotion, gone to Bread-street to see the house and chamber where he was born;" and at Paris the house which VOLTAIRE inhabited, and at Ferney his study, are both preserved inviolate. In the study of MONTESQUIEU at La Brede, near Bordeaux, the proprietor has preserved all the furniture, without altering anything, that the apartment where this great man meditated on his immortal work should want for nothing to assist the reveries of the spectator; and on the side of the chimney is still seen a place which while writing he was accustomed to rub his feet against, as they rested on it. In a keep or dungeon of this feudal château, the local association suggested to the philosopher his chapter on "The Liberty of the Citizen." It is the second chapter of the twelfth book, of which the close is remarkable.
[Footnote A: A public subscription secured the house in which Shakspeare was born at Stratford-on-Avon. Durer's house, at Nuremberg, is still religiously preserved, and its features are unaltered. The house in which Michael Angelo resided at Florence is also carefully guarded, and the rooms are still in the condition in which they were left by the great master.—Ed.]
Let us regret that the little villa of POPE, and the poetic Leasowes of SHENSTONE, have fallen the victims of property as much as if destroyed by the barbarous hand which cut down the consecrated tree of Shakspeare. The very apartment of a man of genius, the chair he studied in, the table he wrote on, are contemplated with curiosity; the spot is full of local impressions. And all this happens from an unsatisfied desire to see and hear him whom we never can see nor hear; yet, in a moment of illusion, if we listen to a traditional conversation, if we can revive one of his feelings, if we can catch but a dim image, we reproduce this man of genius before us, on whose features we so often dwell. Even the rage of the military spirit has taught itself to respect the abode of genius; and Cæsar and Sylla, who never spared the blood of their own Rome, alike felt their spirit rebuked, and alike saved the literary city of Athens. Antiquity has preserved a beautiful incident of this nature, in the noble reply of the artist PROTOGENES. When the city of Rhodes was taken by Demetrius, the man of genius was discovered in his garden, tranquilly finishing a picture. "How is it that you do not participate in the general alarm?" asked the conqueror. "Demetrius, you war against the Rhodians, but not against the fine arts," replied the man of genius. Demetrius had already shown this by his conduct, for he forbade firing that part of the city where the artist resided.
The house of the man of genius has been spared amidst contending empires, from the days of Pindar to those of Buffon; "the Historian of Nature's" château was preserved from this elevated feeling by Prince Schwartzenberg, as our MARLBOROUGH had performed the same glorious office in guarding the hallowed asylum of FENELON.[A] In the grandeur of Milton's verse we perceive the feeling he associated with this literary honour:
The great Emathian conqueror bid spare
The house of Pindarus when temple and tower
Went to the ground—.
[Footnote A: The printing office of Plantyn, at Antwerp, was guarded in a
similar manner during the great revolution that separated Holland and
Belgium, when a troop of soldiers were stationed in its courtyard. See
"Curiosities of Literature," vol. i. p. 77, note.—ED.]
And the meanest things, the very household stuff, associated with the memory of the man of genius, become the objects of our affections. At a festival, in honour of THOMSON the poet, the chair in which he composed part of his "Seasons" was produced, and appears to have communicated some of the raptures to which he was liable who had sat in that chair. RABEIAIS, amongst his drollest inventions, could not have imagined that his old cloak would have been preserved in the university of Montpelier for future doctors to wear on the day they took their degree; nor could SHAKSPEARE have supposed, with all his fancy, that the mulberry-tree which he planted would have been multiplied into relics. But in such instances the feeling is right, with a wrong direction; and while the populace are exhausting their emotions on an old tree, an old chair, and an old cloak, they are paying that involuntary tribute to genius which forms its pride, and will generate the race.
CHAPTER XXV.
Influence of Authors on society, and of society on Authors.—National tastes a source of literary prejudices.—True Genius always the organ of its nation.—Master-writers preserve the distinct national character. —Genius the organ of the state of the age.—Causes of its suppression in a people.—Often invented, but neglected.—The natural gradations of genius.—Men of Genius produce their usefulness in privacy.—The public mind is now the creation of the public writer.—Politicians affect to deny this principle.—Authors stand between the governors and the governed.—A view of the solitary Author in his study.—They create an epoch in history.—Influence of popular Authors.—The immortality of thought.—The Family of Genius illustrated by their genealogy.