In the history of genius therefore there is no chronology, for to its votaries everything it has done is PRESENT—the earliest attempt stands connected with the most recent. This continuity of ideas characterizes the human mind, and seems to yield an anticipation of its immortal nature.
There is a consanguinity in the characters of men of genius, and a genealogy may be traced among their races. Men of genius in their different classes, living at distinct periods, or in remote countries, seem to reappear under another name; and in this manner there exists in the literary character an eternal transmigration. In the great march of the human intellect the same individual spirit seems still occupying the same place, and is still carrying on, with the same powers, his great work through a line of centuries. It was on this principle that one great poet has recently hailed his brother as "the ARIOSTO of the North," and ARIOSTO as "the SCOTT of the South." And can we deny the real existence of the genealogy of genius? Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and Newton! this is a single line of descent!
ARISTOTLE, HOBBES, and LOCKE, DESCARTES, and NEWTON, approximate more than we imagine. The same chain of intellect which ARISTOTLE holds, through the intervals of time, is held by them; and links will only be added by their successors. The naturalists PLINY, GESNER, ALDROVANDUS, and BUFFON, derive differences in their characters from the spirit of the times; but each only made an accession to the family estate, while he was the legitimate representative of the family of the naturalists. ARISTOPHANES, MOLIERE, and FOOTE, are brothers of the family of national wits; the wit of Aristophanes was a part of the common property, and Molière and Foote were Aristophanic. PLUTARCH, LA MOTHE LE VAYER, and BAYLE, alike busied in amassing the materials of human thought and human action, with the same vigorous and vagrant curiosity, must have had the same habits of life. If Plutarch were credulous, La Mothe Le Vayer sceptical, and Bayle philosophical, all that can be said is, that though the heirs of the family may differ in their dispositions, no one will arraign the integrity of the lineal descent. VARRE did for the Romans what PAUSANIAS had done for the Greeks, and MONTFAUCON for the French, and CAMDEN for ourselves.
My learned and reflecting friend, whose original researches have enriched our national history, has this observation on the character of WICKLIFFE: —"To complete our idea of the importance of Wickliffe, it is only necessary to add, that as his writings made John Huss the reformer of Bohemia, so the writings of John Huss led Martin Luther to be the reformer of Germany; so extensive and so incalculable are the consequences which sometimes follow from human actions."[A] Our historian has accompanied this by giving the very feelings of Luther in early life on his first perusal of the works of John Huss; we see the spark of creation caught at the moment: a striking influence of the generation of character! Thus a father-spirit has many sons; and several of the great revolutions in the history of man have been carried on by that secret creation of minds visibly operating on human affairs. In the history of the human mind, he takes an imperfect view, who is confined to contemporary knowledge, as well as he who stops short with the Ancients. Those who do not carry researches through the genealogical lines of genius, mutilate their minds.
Such, then, is the influence of AUTHORS!—those "great lights of the world," by whom the torch of genius has been successively seized and perpetually transferred from hand to hand, in the fleeting scene. DESCARTES delivers it to NEWTON, BACON to LOCKE; and the continuity of human affairs, through the rapid generations of man, is maintained from, age to age!
[Footnote A: Turner's "History of England," vol. ii. p. 432.]
LITERARY MISCELLANIES.
* * * * *
MISCELLANISTS.
Miscellanists are the most popular writers among every people; for it is they who form a communication between the learned and the unlearned, and, as it were, throw a bridge between those two great divisions of the public. Literary Miscellanies are classed among philological studies. The studies of philology formerly consisted rather of the labours of arid grammarians and conjectural critics, than of that more elegant philosophy which has, within our own time, been introduced into literature, and which, by its graces and investigation, augment the beauties of original genius. This delightful province has been termed in Germany the Æsthetic, from a Greek term signifying sentiment or feeling. Æsthetic critics fathom the depths, or run with the current of an author's thoughts, and the sympathies of such a critic offer a supplement to the genius of the original writer. Longinus and Addison are Æsthetic critics. The critics of the adverse school always look for a precedent, and if none is found, woe to the originality of a great writer!