This episode in man’s history,—this stage in the great struggle of life,—has been thus powerfully painted by a contemporary:
We presume there can be little doubt that circumstances have an effect upon the lives and characters of men; to say any thing else would be to contradict flatly the ordinary opinion of the world. Notwithstanding, if one will but look at one’s private experience among the most ordinary and obscure actors in the life-drama, how wonderfully, one must allow, character, temper, heart, and spirit, assert themselves beyond the reach of all external powers! How triumphantly the poor prodigal, to whom Providence has given the fairest prospects, and whose steps are guarded by love and kindness, can vindicate his own instincts against all the virtuous force of circumstance surrounding him, and go to destruction in its very face! Who needs to be taught that ever-recurring lesson? Who can be ignorant that scarcely a great career has ever been made in this world otherwise than in the face of circumstances—in strenuous defiance of all that external elements could do to overcome the unconquerable soul? In the face of such examples, what are we to say to the theory that adverse circumstances can excuse a man born with all the compensations of genius for an unlovely and ignoble life, a bitter and discontented heart, a course of vulgar vice and sordid meanness? Never was genius more wickedly disparaged. That celestial gift to which God has given capacities of enjoyment beyond the reach of the crowd, is of itself an armour against circumstance more proof than steel, and continually holds open to its possessor a refuge against the affronts of the world, a shelter from its contumelies, which is denied to other men. He who reckons of this endowment as of something which gives only a more exquisite egotism, a finer touch of selfishness, a sublimation of envy and self-assertion, and dependence upon the applause of the crowd, forms a mean estimate, against which it is the duty of every man who knows better to protest. Outside circumstances, disappointment, neglect, dark want and misery, have plagued the souls and disturbed the temper of great men before now, but have never, so far as we are aware, polluted a pure heart, or made a noble mind despicable. The bitter soreness of unappreciated genius belongs proverbially to those whose gift is of the smallest; and the man who excuses a bad life by the pretence that this divine lymph contained within it has been soured by popular neglect and turned to gall, speaks sacrilege and profanity.[[124]]
[124]. Quarterly Review.
OUR UNIMAGINATIVE AGE.
We have now no great poets; and our poverty in this respect is not compensated by the fact, that we once had them, and that we may, and do, read their works. The movement has gone by; the charm is broken; the bond of union, though not cancelled, is seriously weakened. Hence our age, great as it is, and in nearly all respects greater than any the world has yet seen, has, notwithstanding its large and generous sentiments, its unexampled toleration, its love of liberty, and its profuse and almost reckless charity, a certain material, unimaginative, and unheroic character, which has made several observers tremble for the future.... That something has been lost is unquestionable.
We have lost much of that imagination which, though in practical life it often misleads, is, in speculative life, one of the highest of all qualities, being suggestive as well as creative. Even practically we should cherish it, because the commerce of the affections mainly depends on it. It is, however, declining; while, at the same time, the increasing refinement of society accustoms us more and more to suppress our emotions, lest they be disagreeable to others. And as the play of the emotions is the chief study of the poet, we see in this circumstance another reason which makes it difficult to rival that great body of poetry which our ancestors possessed. We quote the above from the second volume of Mr. Buckle’s History of Civilization. We would add, that the suppression of emotions to which the author refers is one great cause of the difficulty of getting persons to speak the truth in the present day: they are ever disguising their feelings, until hypocritical caution becomes habit, and it requires a stronger light than the old cynic possessed to find honest men. The low standard of commercial morality, and the time-serving expediency which so greatly regulates the actions of our rulers and those who make the laws, is traceable to this over-refinement.