Poets have been more addicted to building castles upon paper than residences upon the more substantial earth. Though the old axiom of "genius and a garret" has passed away, both as a saying and in the experiences of real life, still it had its pertinency in the early days of literature and art. Ariosto, who was addicted to castle-building with the pen, was asked why he was so modestly lodged when he prepared a permanent home for himself. He replied that palaces are easier built with words than with stones. But the poet, nevertheless, had a snug and pretty abode at Ferrara, Italy, a few leagues from Bologna, which is still extant. Leigh Hunt says: "Poets love nests from which they can take their flights, not worlds of wood and stone to strut in." The younger Pliny was more of a substantial architect, whose villa, devoted to literary leisure, was magnificent, surrounded by gardens and parks. Tycho Brahe, the great Danish astronomer, built a grand castle and observatory combined on an island of the Baltic, opposite Copenhagen, which he named the "Castle of the Heavens."
Many of our readers have doubtless visited the house which Shakespeare built for himself in his native town on Red-Lion Street. In passing through its plain apartments one receives with infinite faith the stereotyped revelations of the local cicerone. Buffon was content to locate himself for his literary work and study in an old half-deserted tower, and Gibbon, as we have seen, to write his great work in the summer-house of a Lausanne garden. Chaucer lived and wrote in a grand palace, because he was connected with royalty; but he never dilated upon such surroundings,—his fancy ran to outdoor nature, to the flowers and the trees. Milton[199] sought an humble "garden house" to live in; that is, a small house in the environs of the city, with a pleasant little garden attached. Addison wrote his "Campaign" "up two pair of back stairs in the Hay-market." Johnson tells us that much of his literary work was produced from a garret in Exeter Street. Paul Jovius,[200] the Italian author, who wrote three hundred concise eulogies of statesmen, warriors, and literary men of the fourteenth century, built himself an elegant château on the Lake of Como, beside the ruins of the villa of Pliny, and declared that when he sat down to write he was inspired by the associations of the place. In his garden he raised a marble statue to Nature, and his halls contained others of Apollo and the Muses.
The traveller visits with eager interest Rubens' house in his native city of Antwerp, a veritable museum within, but plain and unpretentious without. Rubens is to the Belgian capital what Thorwaldsen is to Copenhagen. Spenser lived in an Irish castle (Kilcolman Castle), which was burned over his head by a mob; and, sad to say, his child was burned with it. In his verses Spenser was always depicting "lowly cots," and it was on that plane that his taste rested. Moore's vine-clad cottage at Sloperton is familiar to all. In the environs of Florence we still see the cottage home where Landor lived and wrote, and in the city itself the house of Michael Angelo,—plain and unadorned externally, but with a few of the great artist's household gods duly preserved in the several apartments. The historic home of the poet Longfellow, in Cambridge, has become a Mecca to lovers of poetry and genius; while Tennyson's embowered cottage at the Isle of Wight is equally attractive to travellers from afar.
Pope[201] had a modest nest at Twickenham, and Wordsworth at Rydal Mount, the beauties of both being more dependent upon the surrounding scenery than upon any architectural attraction. Pope declared all gardens to be landscape-paintings, and he loved them. Scott made himself a palatial home at Abbotsford, which was quite an exception to that of his brother poets. Dr. Holmes's unpretentious town house in the Trimountain city overlooks the broad Charles, and affords him a glorious view of the setting sun. Emerson's Concord home was and is the picture of rural simplicity. Hawthorne's biographer makes us familiar with his red cottage at Lenox. Bryant made himself an embowered summer cottage at Roslyn, New York State. Lowell has a fine but plain residence overlooking the beautiful grounds of Mount Auburn. Nothing could be more simple and lovely than Whittier's Danvers home. None of these poets have built castles of stone, whatever they may have done under poetical license.
"I never had any other desire so strong, and so like to covetousness," says the poet Cowley, "as that I might be master at least of a small house and a large garden, with very moderate conveniences joined to them, and there dedicate the remainder of my life only to the culture of them and study of Nature, and then, with no desire beyond my wall,—
'——Whole and entire to lie,
In no unactive ease, and no unglorious poverty.'"
Cowley at last got what he so ardently desired, but it was not until he was too old and broken in health to find that active enjoyment which he had so fondly anticipated. He died in the forty-ninth year of his age.
We spoke of the contrast which was manifest between the private and public life of Molière. These paradoxes are strange, but by no means uncommon in the character of men of genius. It will be remembered that Grimaldi, the cleverest and most mirth-provoking clown of his day in England, was often under medical treatment on account of his serious attacks of melancholy. It seems almost incredible that men of such profound judgment in most matters, as were Dr. Johnson and Addison, should have been so inexcusably weak as to entertain a belief in ghosts,—an eccentricity which neither of them denied. Byron,[202] who as a rule was noted for his shrewd common-sense, was so superstitious that he would not help a person at table to salt, nor permit himself to be served with it by another's hand. There were other equally absurd "omens" which he strenuously regarded. Cowper, who was a devoutly religious man, deliberately attempted to hang himself,—an act entirely at variance with his serious convictions. So also Hugh Miller, one of the most wholesome writers upon the true principles of life, wrested his own life from his Maker's hands.
Pope, who was such a bravado with his pen, boldly denouncing an army of scholars and wits in his "Dunciad," was personally an arrant coward, who could not summon sufficient self-possession to make a statement before a dozen of his personal friends. The paradox which existed between Goldsmith's pen and tongue passed into an axiom: with the one he was all eloquence and grace; with the other, as foolish as a parrot. Douglas Jerrold, whose forte was as clearly that of wit and humor as it is the sun's province to shine, was ever wishing to write a profound essay on natural philosophy. Newton, highest authority in algebra, could not make the proper change for a guinea without assistance, and while he was master of the Mint was hourly put to shame by the superior practical arithmetic of the humblest clerks under him. Another peculiarity of Newton was that he fancied himself a poet; but who ever saw a verse of his composition? Judged by all accepted rules, Charles Lamb experienced ills sufficient to have driven him to commit suicide; whereas the truth shows that with "his sly, shy, elusive, ethereal humor" he was ordinarily the most genial and contented of beings.
Curious beyond expression are the many-sided phases of genius, and indeed of all humanity. Let us therefore have a care how we judge our fellow-men, since what they truly are within themselves we cannot know, and may only infer by what they seem to be relatively to ourselves. Undoubtedly the germs of virtue and of vice are born within the soul of every human being; their development is contingent upon how slight a cause! Nor in our readiness to censure should we forget in whose image we are all created,—"a little lower than the angels, a little higher than the brutes." It is the nature of man, like the harp, to give forth beautiful or discordant sounds according to the delicacy and skill with which it is touched. We find what we come to find,—what, indeed, we bring with us. Richard Baxter, the prolific author upon theology, at the close of a long life said: "I now see more good and more evil in all men than heretofore I did. I see that good men are not so good as I once thought they were; and I find that few are so bad as either malicious enemies or censorious professors do imagine."