even when my mind is almost bereft of intelligence, and when my vile body would find considerable difficulty in holding itself erect.' And so the arch-sinner flatters himself that this brief epistle will prove a splendid stroke of diplomacy, and, at the same time, impart an ingenious sanction to his carousal for the night. Charles Lamb would probably have called this a delicious bit of wickedness, and with his 'insuperable proclivity to gin,' as Carlyle unamiably remarks, would probably have wished to share in Steele's little revel. But passing by these equivocal episodes, let us follow the child of Genius into the doleful path which so many have to traverse. CHAPTER XVI. IN THE VIA DOLOROSA. 'THE way to Fame,' says Sterne, 'is like the way to Heaven -through much tribulation.' The opening chapters in the aspirant's career are, as we have seen, frequently full of trouble and disappointment. He must often matriculate in misery. Obstacles are flung before him with a prodigality which threatens to debar his approach to the glittering goal. There are few tales more exciting than those of struggling, but indomitable genius. You cannot fail to 'Mark what ills the scholar's life assail; You see him attacked by a troop of difficulties, which close upon him as if resolved that he shall be completely crushed. Yet, in many cases, you also see him bearing up heroically against those adversaries without bating one jot of heart and hope. The discipline is rough, for Fame handles her chosen children rudely at times; but if they can endure this rugged schooling patiently, there is no doubt it constitutes one of the best stimulants to activity, and contributes richly to their mental development. They are dealt with, as a colonel in the Peninsular war is said to have treated his regiment : he allowed it to be surrounded by the enemy, and then coolly told his men that they must either be 'extinguished or distinguished.' The literary biography of Germany in particular, the lives of such men as Richter, Fichte, Schiller, Voss, and others, are replete with illustrations of this description. As he advances in life, the gifted one finds that he must not only prepare to endure the ordinary sorrows of humanity, but must probably encounter others which are more special to his profession. If it be true, as Sainte-Beuve remarks, that la douleur est plus adaptée à notre nature que le plaisir, we may assume that this principle will apply more pointedly to minds of a higher organisation than to those of humbler perceptions and duller emotions. 'Of all the faculties born with me,' writes Corinne, 'that of sorrow is the only one I have exercised to the full.' In many ways genius must suffer for the proud prerogative it enjoys. Could all its penalties be anticipated and thoroughly comprehended, there are certainly some who would shrink from the acceptance of the gift, for Nature tells us frankly that it is a crown of thorns as well as of glory. But as there are thousands of people who would accept a diadem, even if it were spiked within and without, or seat themselves on a throne, even if it were studded with nails like the cask in which Regulus was imprisoned, so the longing for fame, when eagerly indulged, will generally overpower every other feeling, and lead a man to brave every possible peril. Of the many miseries to which genius is peculiarly exposed, only a few can be mentioned here; and upon these few it will be a duty to touch with a rapid hand. Illustrations abound, for some have had a very surfeit of sorrow. First, let it be remembered that the fine endowment, which has been the subject of so much envy and admiration, seems often to enfeeble, sometimes to shatter, the frail vessel in which it is lodged. A fragile frame, delicate nerves, excessive sensibility, and trembling health, are frequent attendants upon lofty endowments. It would seem, in many cases, as if the celestial guest required a finer bodily tissue than the clay which suffices for ordinary use. The agonies which were endured by poor Cowper are well known, and are all the more remarkable from the fact that the man who was temporarily driven to madness by the prospect of undergoing a mere examination for a clerkship, was really one of the most vigorous and masculine of poets. The author of the ever-stirring ballad of John Gilpin was at times the saddest soul in all England. 'That,' said his friend Newton on one occasion, 'is the first smile for sixteen months!' Pascal was another specimen of suffering, consequent upon physical weakness and morbid emotion; his powerful intellect was almost palsied by an accident which happened to him in his carriage; and the writer, who may be said to have amused all Europe by his laughing artillery, and alarmed all Popedom by his matchless irony, sank at an early age into a gloomy recluse. Leopardi, the Italian poet, suffered from the softening and distortion of his bones; the organs in his chest being so compressed that his breathing was difficult and his circulation impeded; consumption and dropsy supervened, and for twenty years the brave man who aspired to become immortal by his labours, knew little, if any, respite from his sufferings. Heinrich Heine for a large portion of his life was a prey to tortured nerves, and, like the Gymnotus, his body seemed to be made up of batteries of pain, which, however, were always discharged into himself. 'He slept,' says Lewald, 'many times at my house, and not only the clock in his sleeping-room had to be removed, but also the one in the next room had to be totally brought to a stand-still. The tick-tack and the striking of the hours would otherwise have so strangely affected him, that, as he assured me, he would have the worst of headaches. In Paris he was always a long time in making his selection of a dwelling which should satisfy him in this respect (quiet and silence). The loneliest, the most remote, streets are those he prefers, and sometimes he chooses a solitary silent court, and sometimes the third or fourth from the street, far from the rush and hurry of life. No stable, no laundry, no noisy artisan must have a place near him.' But the time came when, smitten by paralysis, he had to spend his days, not only in one dwelling, but in one bed. In a back room in the Rue d'Amsterdam, three stories high, reached by a steep staircase, and with windows looking into a dull court where the sun only shone at midday, the caustic German lay for twelve years, suffering from a malady (softening of the spinal marrow) which kept him in perpetual torture. He could not stand upright. He had to be lifted like a child from his bed when change was necessary. The sight of one eye was gone, and to see with the other it became needful to lift the unnerved lid with his finger. As the weary years went by, his infirmities increased. His back became twisted, and his body began to waste away: he lost the use of his hands and arms to such a degree that he ceased to write his letters himself more than six years before his death. His powers of mastication were so crippled that he had to be fed 'like a bird.' What he ate tasted like earth. His nervous system was so shaken that he lived in constant fear of fire, feeling how helpless he would be in case such a calamity occurred. He said jestingly that if his nerves could be exhibited in the Exposition Universelle (at Paris in 1855) they would obtain a gold medal for pain and suffering. 'I have endured,' said he on one occasion, 'more sorrow in the last three months than the church Inquisition ever invented.'1 1 Life of Heinrich Heine, by Stigand, vol. ii. pp. 353, 385. |