ERRONEOUS CONCEPTIONS OF THE CHARACTER OF DISTANT AUTHORS. 459

was the unbeliever in disinterested virtue. This great genius was one of those pretended patriots destitute of a single one of the virtues for which he was the clamorous advocate of faction.

When Valincour attributed the excessive tenderness in the tragedies of RACINE to the poet's own impassioned character, the son amply showed that his father was by no means this slave of love. RACINE never wrote a single love poem, nor even had a mistress; and his wife had never read his tragedies, for poetry was not her delight. Racine's motive for making love the constant source of action in his tragedies, was, from the principle which has influenced so many poets, who usually conform to the prevalent taste of the times. In the court of a young monarch, it was necessary that heroes should be lovers; Corneille had nobly run in one career, and Racine could not have existed as a great poet, had he not rivalled him in an opposite one. The tender RACINE was no lover; but he was a subtle and epigrammatic observer, before whom his convivial friends never cared to open their minds; and the caustic BOILEAU truly said of him, " RACINE is far more

malicious than I am."

ALFIERI speaks of his mistress, as if he lived with her in the most unreserved familiarity; the reverse was the case. And the gratitude and affection with which he describes his mother, and which she deserved, entered so little into his habitual feelings, that after their early separation, he never saw her but once, though he often passed through the country where she resided.

private life, I have heard participated in them in no other way than on his canvas. EVELYN, Who has written in favour of active life, "loved and lived in retirement*;" while Sir GEORGE MACKENZIE, who had been continually in the bustle of business, framed a eulogium on solitude. We see in MACHIAVEL'S code of tyranny, of depravity, and of criminal violence, a horrid picture of human nature; but this retired philosopher was a friend to the freedom of his country, he participated in none of the crimes he had recorded, but drew up these systematised crimes "as an observer, not as a criminal." DRUMMOND, whose sonnets still retain the beauty and the sweetness and the delicacy of the most amiable imagination, was a man of a harsh irritable temper, and has been thus characterised :

"Testie Drummond could not speak for fretting."

Thus authors and artists may yield no certain indication of their personal characters in their works. Inconstant men will write on constancy, and licentious minds may elevate themselves into poetry and piety. We should be unjust to some of the greatest geniuses, if the extraordinary sendramatic personages are maliciously to be applied timents which they put into the mouths of their

to themselves. EURIPIDES was accused of atheism

when he introduced a denier of the gods on the stage. MILTON has been censured by CLARKE for the impiety of Satan; and an enemy of SHAKESPEARE might have reproached him for his perfect delineation of the accomplished villain Iago, as it was said that Dr. MOORE was hurt in JOHNSON has composed a beautiful Rambler, the opinions of some by his odious Zeluco. CREdescribing the pleasures which result from the influence of good-humour; and somewhat remark-with all the iniquities of Atreus, and they consider BILLON complains of this :-"They charge me ably says, "Without good-humour, learning and bravery can be only formidable, and confer that me in some places as a wretch with whom it is superiority which swells the heart of the lion in unfit to associate; as if all which the mind invents the desert, where he roars without reply, and must be derived from the heart." This poet offers a striking instance of the little alliance existing ravages without resistance." He who could so between the literary and personal dispositions of finely discover the happy influence of this pleasing an author. CREBILLON, who exulted, on his quality, was himself a stranger to it, and "the roar and the ravage" were familiar to our lion. entrance into the French Academy, that he had Men of genius frequently substitute their beautiful never tinged his pen with the gall of satire, imagination for spontaneous and natural senti- delighted to strike on the most harrowing string

ment.

It is not therefore surprising, if we are often erroneous in the conception we form of the personal character of a distant author. KLOP. STOCK, the votary of the muse of Zion, so astonished and warmed the sage BODMER, that he invited the inspired bard to his house; but his visitor shocked the grave professor, when, instead of a poet rapt in silent meditation, a volatile youth leaped out of the chaise, who was an enthusiast for retirement only when writing verses. An artist, whose pictures exhibit a series of scenes of domestic tenderness, awakening all the charities of

Since this was written, the correspondence of EVELYN has appeared, by which we find that he apologised to Cowley for having published this very treatise, which seemed to condemn that life of study and privacy to which they were both equally attached; and confesses that the whole must be considered as a mere sportive effusion, requesting that Cowley would not suppose its principles formed his private opinions. Thus LEIBNITZ, we are told, laughed at the fanciful system revealed in his Theodicée, and acknowledged that he never wrote it in earnest; that a philosopher is not always obliged to write seriously, and that to invent an hypothesis is only a proof of the force of imagination.

of the tragic lyre. In his Atreus, the father drinks the blood of his son; in his Rhadamistus, the son expires under the hand of the father; in his Electra, the son assassinates the mother. A poet is a painter of the soul, but a great artist is not therefore a bad man.

performed in his chamber, and, in rising to embrace it, his hands dropped and failed him; thus, as Professor Dugald Stewart observes on this philosopher," He expired in performing what his old preceptor, Buchanan, would not have scrupled to describe as an act of idolatry."

We must not then consider that he who paints vice with energy is therefore vicious, lest we injure an honourable man; nor must we imagine that he who celebrates virtue is therefore virtuous, for we may then repose on a heart which knowing the right pursues the wrong.

MONTAIGNE appears to have been sensible of this fact in the literary character. Of authors, he says, he likes to read their little anecdotes and private passions :-" Car j'ai une singulière curiosité de connaître l'âme et les naïfs jugemens de mes auteurs. Il faut bien juger leur suffisance, mais non pas leurs mœurs, ni eux, par cette montre These paradoxical appearances in the history of de leurs écrits qu'ils étalent au théâtre du monde." genius present a curious moral phenomenon. Which may be thus translated: "For I have a Much must be attributed to the plastic nature of singular curiosity to know the soul and simple the versatile faculty itself. Unquestionably many opinions of my authors. We must judge of their men of genius bave often resisted the indulgence ability, but not of their manners, nor of them- of one talent to exercise another with equal power; selves, by that show of their writings which they and some who have solely composed sermons, could display on the theatre of the world." This is have touched on the foibles of society with the very just; are we yet sure, however, that the sim- spirit of Horace or Juvenal. BLACKSTONE and plicity of this old favourite of Europe might not Sir WILLIAM JONES directed that genius to the have been as much a theatrical gesture as the austere studies of law and philology, which might sentimentality of Sterne? The great authors of have excelled in the poetical and historical chathe Port-Royal Logic have raised severe objections racter. So versatile is this faculty of genius, that to prove that MONTAIGNE was not quite so open its possessors are sometimes uncertain of the in respect to those simple details which he ima- manner in which they shall treat their subject, gined might diminish his personal importance whether gravely or ludicrously. When BREBŒuf, with his readers. He pretends that he reveals all the French translator of the Pharsalia of Lucan, bis infirmities and weaknesses, while he is per- had completed the first book as it now appears, petually passing himself off for something more he at the same time composed a burlesque version, than he is. He carefully informs us that he has and sent both to the great arbiter of taste in that a page," the usual attendant of an independent day, to decide which the poet should continue. gentleman, and lives in an old family château; The decision proved to be difficult. Are there when the fact was, that his whole revenue did not not writers who, with all the vehemence of genius, exceed six thousand livres, a state beneath medio- by adopting one principle, can make all things crity. He is also equally careful not to drop any shrink into the pigmy forms of ridicule, or by mention of his having a clerk with a bag; for he adopting another principle startle us by the gigantic was a counsellor of Bordeaux, but affected the monsters of their own exaggerated imagination? gentleman and the soldier. He trumpets himself On this principle of the versatility of the faculty, forth for having been mayor of Bordeaux, as this a production of genius is a piece of art which offered an opportunity of telling us that he suc-wrought up to its full effect, with a felicity of ceeded Marshal Biron, and resigned it to Marshal manner acquired by taste and habit, is merely the Matignon. Could he have discovered that any result of certain arbitrary combinations of the marshal had been a lawyer, he would not have mind. sunk that part of his life. Montaigne himself has said, "that in forming a judgment of a man's life, particular regard should be paid to his behaviour at the end of it ;" and he more than once tells us that the chief study of his life is to die calm and silent; and that he will plunge himself headlong and stupidly into death, as into an obscure abyss, which swallows one up in an instant; that to die was the affair of a moment's suffering, and required no precepts. He talked of reposing on the "pillow of doubt." But how did this great philosopher die? He called for the more powerful opiates of the infallible church! The mass was

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Are we then to reduce the works of a man of genius to a mere sport of his talents—a game in which he is only the best player? Can he whose secret power raises so many emotions in our breasts, be without any in his own? A mere actor performing a part? Is he unfeeling when he is pathetic, indifferent when he is indignant? Is he an alien to all the wisdom and virtue he inspires? No! were men of genius themselves to assert this, and it is said some incline so to do, there is a more certain conviction than their misconceptions, in our own consciousness, which for ever assures us, that deep feelings and elevated

thoughts can alone spring from those who feel there may be no identity between the book and deeply and think nobly. the man, still for us, an author is ever an abstract "A dead being, and, as one of the Fathers said, man may sin dead, leaving books that make others sin." An author's wisdom or his folly does not die with him. The volume, not the author, is our companion, and is for us a real personage, performing before us whatever it inspires; "He being dead, yet speaketh." Such is the vitality of a book!

CHAPTER XXI

In proving that the character of the man may be very opposite to that of his writings, we must recollect that the habits of the life may be contrary to the habits of the mind*. The influence of their studies over men of genius is limited. Out of the ideal world, man is reduced to be the active creature of sensation. An author has, in truth, two distinct characters: the literary, formed by the habits of his study; the personal, by the habits of his situation. GRAY, cold, effeminate, and timid in his personal, was lofty and awful in his literary character. We see men of polished The man of letters-Occupies an intermediate station manners and bland affections, who, in grasping a pen, are thrusting a poniard; while others in domestic life with the simplicity of children and the feebleness of nervous affections, can shake the senate or the bar with the vehemence of their eloquence and the intrepidity of their spirit. The AMONG the active members of the literary writings of the famous BAPTISTA PORTA are republic, there is a class whom formerly we distinmarked by the boldness of his genius, which guished by the title of MEN OF LETTERS, a title formed a singular contrast with the pusillanimity which, with us, has nearly gone out of currency, of his conduct when menaced or attacked. though I do not think that the general term of heart may be feeble though the mind is strong." 'literary men" would be sufficiently appropriate. To think boldly may be the habit of the mind, to act weakly may be the habit of the constitution.

:

The

However the personal character may contrast with that of their genius, still are the works themselves genuine, and exist as realities for usand were so doubtless to the composers themselves in the act of composition. In the calm of study, a beautiful imagination may convert him, whose morals are corrupt, into an admirable moralist, awakening feelings which yet may be cold in the business of life as we have shown that the phlegmatic can excite himself into wit, and the cheerful man delight in "Night Thoughts." SALLUST, the corrupt Sallust, might retain the most sublime conceptions of the virtues which were to save the Republic; and STERNE, whose heart was not so susceptible in ordinary occurrences, while he was gradually creating incident after incident and touching successive emotions, in the stories of Le Fevre and Maria, might have thrilled -like some of his readers. Many have mourned over the wisdom or the virtue they contemplated, mortified at their own infirmity. Thus, though

between authors and readers.-His solitude described. -Often the father of genius.-Atticus, a man of letters of antiquity. The perfect character of a modern man of letters exhibited in Peiresc.-Their utility to authors and artists.

The man of letters, whose habits and whose whole life so closely resemble those of an author, can only be distinguished by this simple circumstance, that the man of letters is not an author.

Yet he whose sole occupation through life is literature, he who is always acquiring and never producing, appears as ridiculous as the architect who never raised an edifice, or the statuary who refrains from sculpture. His pursuits are reproached with terminating in an epicurean selfishness, and amidst his incessant avocations he himself is considered as a particular sort of idler.

This race of literary characters, as we now find them, could not have appeared till the press had poured forth its affluence. In the degree that the nations of Europe became literary, was that philosophical curiosity kindled, which induced some to devote their fortunes and their days, and to experience some of the purest of human enjoyments, in preserving and familiarising themselves with "the monuments of vanished minds," as books are called by D'Avenant with so much sublimity. Their expansive library presents an indestructible history of the genius of every people, through all their eras-and whatever men have thought and whatever men have done, were at length discovered in books.

Men of letters occupy an intermediate station between authors and readers. They are gifted with more curiosity of knowledge and more multiplied tastes, and by those precious collections which they are forming during their lives, are more completely furnished with the means than are

possessed by the multitude who read, and the few Hollanders as lief-hebbers, lovers or fanciers, and who write.

deprived of the use of their libraries. DE THOU, does she owe this more than to these men of with all a brother's sympathy, in his great history, has recorded the sad fates of several who had witnessed their collections dispersed in the civil wars of France, or had otherwise been deprived of their precious volumes. Sir ROBERT COTTON fell ill, and betrayed, in the ashy paleness of his counte-attest the existence of their labours. Our BoDnance, the misery which killed him on the sequestration of his collections. "They have broken my heart who have locked up my library from me," was his lament.