Such principles and facts there do exist; and we now proceed to enumerate some of them. And first, some of the most flagrantly bad of literary men have had no real pretensions to genius. Savage, for example, Boyce, and Dermody, were men of tolerable talent, and intolerable impudence, conceit, and profligacy. Churchill was of a higher order, but has been ridiculously overrated by whoever it was that wrote a paper on him, not long since, in the "Edinburgh Review"—a disgraceful apology for a disgraceful and disgusting life. Swift and Chatterton, with all their vast talents, wanted, we think, the fine differentia, and the genial element of real poetic genius. And time would fail us to enumerate the hundreds of lesser spirits who have employed their small modica of light, which they mistook for genius, as lamps allowing them to see their way more clearly down to the chambers of death. Talent, however great, is not genius. Wit, however refined, is not genius. Learning, however profound, is not genius. But genius has been confounded not only with these respectable and valuable powers, but with glibness of speech, a knack of rhyming, the faculty of echoing others, elegance of language, fury of excitation, and a hundred other qualities, either mechanical or morbid, and then the faults of such feeble or
diseased pretenders have been gravely laid down at the door of the insulted genius of poetry.
Secondly, real genius has not always received its due meed from the world. Like real religion, it has found itself in an enemy's land. Resisted, as it has often been, at every step, it has not been able uniformly to maintain the dignity, or to enjoy the repose, to which it was entitled. Men of genius have occasionally soured in temper, and this has bred now the savage satisfaction with which Dr. Johnson wrote and printed, in large capitals, the line in his "London"—
"Slow rises worth by poverty depressed;"
and now feelings still fiercer, more aggressive, and more destructive to the moral balance of the soul. It is a painful predicament in which the man of genius has often felt himself. Willing to give to all men a portion of the bread of life, and unable to obtain the bread that perisheth—balked in completing the unequal bargain of light from heaven with earthly pelf—carrying about fragments of God's great general book of truth from reluctant or contemptuous bookseller to bookseller—subject even after his generous and noble thoughts are issued to the world, to the faint praise, or chilly silence, or abusive fury of oracular dunces—to the spurn of any mean slave who can find an assassin's cloak in the "Anonymous," and who does not even, it may be, take the trouble of looking at the divine thing he stabs, but strikes in blind and brutal fury; such has been and is the experience of many of whom the world is not worthy; and can it be wondered at, that some of them sink in the strife, and that others, even while triumphing, do so at the expense of much of the bloom, the expansive generosity, the all-embracing sympathy which were their original inheritance? Think of Byron's first volume, trampled like a weed in the dust—of Shelley's magnificent "Revolt of Islam," insulted and chased out of public view—of Keats's first volume and its judicial murder—of other attempts, less successful, such as the treatment of Carlyle's "French Revolution," at its first appearance, by a weekly journal (the "Athenæum"), which now follows his proud path with its feeble and unaccepted adulation, and then speak with more pity of the aberrations into which the weaker sons of the muse have been hurried, and with more respect of the stern insulation and growing indifference to opinion and firmness of antagonistic determination which characterize her stronger children.
Thirdly, the aberrations of genius are often unduly magnified. The spots in a star are invisible—those in a sun are marked by every telescope. No man is a hero to his valet de chambre. And the reason often is, the valet is an observant but malicious and near-sighted fool. He sees the spots without seeing their small proportion to the magnitude of the orb. Nay, he creates spots if he can not see them. The servants of Mrs. Siddons, while she was giving her famous private readings from Milton and Shakspeare, thought their mistress mad, and used to say, "There's the old lady making as
much noise as ever." Many and microscopic are the eyes which follow the steps of genius; and, too often, while they mark the mistakes, they are blind to the motives; to the palliations, to the resistance, and to the remorse. The world first idolizes genius—rates it even beyond its true worth—calls it perfect—remembers its divine derivation, but forgets that it must shine on us through earthly vessels, and then avenges on the earthly vessels the disappointment of its own exaggerated expectations. Hence each careless look, or word, or action of the hapless son of publicity, is noted, and, if possible, misinterpreted; his occasional high spirits are traced to physical excitement; his occasional stupidity voted a sin; his rapture and the reaction from it are both called in to witness against him: nay, an entire class of creatures arises, whose instinct it is to discover, and whose trade it is to tell his faults as a writer, and his failings as a man. It is under such a broad and searching glare, like that of a stage, that many men of warm temperament, strong passions, and sensitive feelings, have been obliged to play their part. And can we wonder that—sometimes sickened at the excessive and unnatural heat, sometimes dazzled by the overbearing and insolent light, and often disgusted at the falsehood of their position, and the cruelty or incompetence of their self-constituted judges—they have played it ludicrously or woefully ill?
But again, till of late, the moral nature, and moral culture of genius, were things ignored by general opinion, by critics, and even by men of genius themselves. Milton and a few others were thought lucky and strange exceptions to the general rule. The general rule was understood to be that the gifted were most apt to go astray—that the very light that was in them was darkness—that aberration, in a word, was the law of their goings. One of their own number said that
"The light that led astray,
Was light from heaven."
Critics, such as Hazlitt, too well qualified to speak of the errors of the genius which they criticised, were not content to palliate those by circumstances, but defended them on the dangerous principle of necessary connection. The powers of high intellect were magnified—its errors excused—and its solemn duties and responsibilities passed over in silence. The text, "Where much is given, much also shall be required," was seldom quoted. Genius was regarded as a chartered libertine—not as a child of divine law—guided, indeed, rather by the spirit than the letter, but still in accordance with law, as well as with liberty—as a capricious comet, not a planet, brighter and swifter than its fellows. Now, we think all this is changing, and that the true judges and friends of the poet, while admitting his fallibility, condemning his faults, and forewarning him of his dangers, are ever ready to contend that his gift is moral, that his power is conferred for holy purposes, that he is a missionary of God, in a lower yet lofty sense—and