[158] The author remembers him well on the occasion of his first appearance in this country as a lecturer and public reader. His style at that time (which was afterwards changed) was that of a modern dude, wearing flash waistcoats, double watch-chains, gold eye-glasses and rings.
[159] No father or mother thinks their own children ugly; and this self-deceit is yet stronger with respect to the offspring of the mind.—Cervantes.
[160] No one can anticipate the suffrages of posterity. Every man in judging of himself is his own contemporary. He may feel the gale of popularity, but he cannot tell how long it will last. His opinion of himself wants distance, wants time, wants numbers, to set off and confirm it. He must be indifferent to his own merits before he can feel a confidence in them. Besides, every one must be sensible of a thousand weaknesses and deficiencies in himself, whereas genius only leaves behind it the monuments of its strength.—Hazlitt.
[161] The "Song of the Shirt" first appeared in "Punch," in 1844; and was Hood's favorite piece of all his published compositions, though the "Bridge of Sighs" was perhaps more popular with the public. Hood died in 1845, at the age of forty-seven.
[162] His sister, Mlle. de Scudéri, is better known to us in literature than himself. She was a distinguished member of the society which met at the Hôtel de Rambouillet, and which has been made so famous by Molière in his "Précieuses ridicules." She survived her brother some years.
[163] Sue studied medicine at first, and was with the French army in Spain (1823) as military surgeon. After inheriting his father's fortune, he studied painting, but renounced that art finally to engage in literature. His romances were for a time as popular as those of Dumas, and in their character as immoral as those of Paul de Kock.
[164] He possessed a diminutive figure, with a pale, attenuated face, eyes of spiritual brightness, an expansive and calm brow, and his movements were characterized by a nervous alacrity. Until he reached the years of middle life he was embarrassed by restricted means and necessary habits of self-denial.
[165] With gun in hand, and note-book and drawing material by his side, Audubon explored the coast, lakes, and rivers from Labrador and Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. As early as 1810 he explored alone the primeval forests of North America, impelled more by a love of Nature than a desire to make himself famous. His original and finely hand-colored illustrated work sold in folio at a thousand dollars a volume, and is now rare and valuable.
[166] Like Milton, Swift, and other great geniuses, Scott was, as Swift says of himself at school, "very justly celebrated for his stupidity." But one is inclined to think that it was largely owing to a want of talent in his master rather than in the pupil. It will be remembered that it was the illustrious Samuel Parr, when an undermaster at Harrow School, who first discovered the latent talent and genius of Sheridan, and who by judicious cultivation brought it forth and developed it.
[167] In five or six years subsequent to that failure of his maiden speech, Disraeli, as he was then known, became leader of the Opposition in the House, and Chancellor of the Exchequer soon after, rising rapidly, until in 1868 he became Premier of England.