of Byron, is to be done not when the poet will, but when he can, or rather, when he must.
But if you are a wise genius you will feel how necessary is culture even for work of that kind. Byron would not have felt any enthusiasm for the isles of Greece if he had not known something of their history. The verses are an inspiration, but they could never have occurred to a quite uncultivated person, however bright his inspirations. Even more obviously was the genius of Keats dependent upon his culture. He did not read Greek, but from translations of Greek literature and from the direct study of Greek art he got the sort of material that he needed. And in our own day Morris has been evidently a very diligent student of many literatures. What I insist upon is, that we could not have had the real Keats, the real Morris, unless they had prepared themselves by culture. We see immediately that the work they have done is their work, specially, that they were specially adapted for it—inspired for it, if you will. But how evident it is that the inspiration could never have produced the work, or anything like it, without labor in the accumulation of material!
Now, although men of genius cannot be regularly progressive in actual production, cannot write so many verses a day, regularly, as you may spin yarn, they can be very regular as students, and some of the best of them have been quite remarkable for unflinching steadiness of application in that way. The great principle recommended by Mr. Galton, of not looking forward eagerly to the end of your journey, but interesting yourself chiefly in the progress of it, is as applicable to the studies of men of genius as to those of more ordinary persons.
LETTER VI.
TO AN ARDENT FRIEND WHO TOOK NO REST.
On some verses of Goethe—Man not constituted like a planet—Matthew Arnold’s poem, “Self-dependence”—Poetry and prose—The wind more imitable than the stars—The stone in Glen Croe—Rest and be thankful.
“Rambling over the wild moors, with thoughts oftentimes as wild and dreary as those moors, the young Carlyle, who had been cheered through his struggling sadness, and strengthened for the part he was to play in life, by the beauty and the wisdom which Goethe had revealed to him, suddenly conceived the idea that it would be a pleasant and a fitting thing if some of the few admirers in England forwarded to Weimar a trifling token of their admiration. On reaching home Mr. Carlyle at once sketched the design of a seal to be engraved, the serpent of eternity encircling a star, with the words ohne Hast, ohne Rast (unhasting, unresting), in allusion to the well-known verses—
| ‘Wie das Gestirn, Ohne Hast Aber ohne Rast Drehe sich jeder Um die eigne Last.’ |