I.—Yet I have seen the time when you were in despair at the thought of being only a common man. You will never be happy if the pro and the con distress you alike. You should take your side, and keep to it. Though people will agree with you that men of genius are usually singular, or as the proverb says, there are no great wits without a grain of madness, yet they will always look down on ages that have produced no men of genius. They will pay honour to the nations among whom they have existed; sooner or later, they rear statues to them, and regard them as the benefactors of the human race. With all deference to the sublime minister whom you have cited, I still believe that if falsehood may sometimes be useful for a moment, it is surely hurtful in the long-run; and so, on the other hand, truth is surely useful in the long-run, though it may sometimes chance to be inconvenient for the moment. Whence I should be tempted to conclude that the man of genius who cries down a general error, or wins credit for a great truth, is always a creature that deserves our veneration. It may happen that such an one falls a victim to prejudice and the laws; but there are two sorts of laws, the one of an equity and generality that is absolute, the other of an incongruous kind, which owe all their sanction to the blindness or exigency of circumstance. The latter only cover the culprit who infringes them with passing ignominy, an ignominy that time pours back on the judges and the nations, there to remain for ever. Whether is Socrates, or the authority that bade him drink the hemlock, in the worst dishonour in our day?
He.—Not so fast. Was he any the less for that condemned? Or any the less put to death? Or any the less a bad citizen? By his contempt for a bad law did he any the less encourage blockheads to despise good ones? Or was he any the less an audacious eccentric? You were close there upon an admission that would have done little for men of genius.
I.—But listen to me, my good man. A society ought not to have bad laws, and if it had only good ones, it would never find itself persecuting a man of genius. I never said to you that genius was inseparably bound up with wickedness, any more than wickedness is with genius. A fool is many a time far worse than a man of parts. Even supposing a man of genius to be usually of a harsh carriage, awkward, prickly, unbearable; even if he be thoroughly bad, what conclusion do you draw?
He.—That he ought to be drowned.
I.—Gently, good man. Now I will not take your uncle Rameau for an instance; he is harsh, he is brutal, he has no humanity, he is a miser, he is a bad father, bad husband, bad uncle; but it has never been settled that he is particularly clever, that he has advanced his art, or that there will be any talk of his works ten years hence. But Racine, now? He at any rate had genius, and did not pass for too good a man. And Voltaire?
He.—Beware of pressing me, for I am not one to shrink from conclusions.
I.—Which of the two would you prefer; that he should have been a worthy soul, identified with his till, like Briasson, or with his yard measure, like Barbier, each year producing a lawful babe, good husband, good father, good uncle, good neighbour, decent trader, but nothing more; or that he should have been treacherous, ambitious, envious, spiteful, but the author of Andromaque, Britannicus, Iphigenie, Phèdre, Athalie?
He.—For his own sake, on my word, perhaps of the two men it would have been a great deal better that he should have been the first.
I.—That is even infinitely more true than you think.
He.—Ah, there you are, you others! If we say anything good and to the purpose, ’tis like madmen or creatures inspired, by a hazard; it is only you wise people who know what you mean. Yes, my philosopher, I know what I mean as well as you do.