Genius in Sunshine and Shadow

CHAPTER VIII

Egotism in eminent characters is often amusing to us, but extremely undignified in them. It is almost always the betrayal of weakness, – the tongue of vanity. He who talks of himself, however humble the words, exposes a proud heart. Still, as Emerson says, "there are dull and bright, sacred and profane, coarse and fine egotists." Carlyle was an egotist of the first water, and so were many other famous authors. Demosthenes expressed his pleasure when even a fishwoman pointed him out in the streets of Athens. Margaret Fuller once wrote: "I have now met all the minds of this country worth meeting, and find none comparable to my own "! The admiration point is ours; the words evince most insufferable vanity. No wonder Emerson complained of her "mountainous me," or that Lowell called the whole of her being a "capital I." Even the gentle, undemonstrative Hawthorne was obliged to denounce her vanity; and yet Margaret was a woman full of kindly human instinct and of remarkable culture. Dickens was vain,158 egotistical, and selfish, – traits which grew upon him as he advanced in years. Thackeray, in his frank, open way, acknowledged his delight at being recognized by street gamins as the author of "Vanity Fair." Hans Andersen, like Dante, confidently predicted his own future greatness. Kepler declared that "God has not sent in six thousand years an observer like myself." Buffon's vanity was proverbial and ridiculous; and yet the man was not ridiculous according to Pope's idea, that "every man has just so much vanity as he lacks understanding," for we all know that Buffon was a profound naturalist and scholar. "I am the greatest historian that ever lived," wrote Gibbon in his private diary; and Goethe said, "All I have had to do, I have done in kingly fashion." Albert Dürer, in reviewing his own work, wrote, "It cannot be better done." Though he had in his day many admirers, and has even some at the present time, we confess that his pictures have no attraction for us. However, he has unquestionable merit as an engraver, and was court painter to Charles V. Ruskin's conceit peeps out everywhere in his writings. Nothing could be more egotistical than Disraeli's (Beaconsfield) novels. George Sand boastfully betrays her own liaison with De Musset in her popular story of "Elle et Lui." "I shall be read," says Southey, "by posterity, if I am not read now, – read with Milton, and Virgil, and Dante, when poets whose works are now famous will only be known through a biographical dictionary."159 Most of the eminent men among the ancients were superlatively conceited and vain. Plato quoted the oracle which pronounced him great; Cæsar frequently commends himself, and so does Cicero. Pliny puts himself on record as one of this class when he wrote to Venator: "The longer your letter was, so much the more agreeable I thought it, especially as it turned entirely upon my works. I am not surprised you should find a pleasure in them, since I know you have the same affection for every composition of mine as you have for the author." "A modern instance" occurs to us here. When a certain distinguished lady asked Lord Brougham, the great English orator and author, who was the best debater in the House of Lords, his lordship modestly replied, "Lord Stanley is the second best, madam." That some people who despise flatterers do not hesitate to flatter themselves, is an axiom to the truth of which we must all subscribe.

In contradistinction to these, Whittier, the Quaker poet, wrote recently to a correspondent in that gentle, modest manner which is so characteristic of everything relating to him: "I have never thought of myself as a poet in the sense in which we use the word when we speak of the great poets. I have just said from time to time the things I had to say, and it has been a series of surprises to me that people should pay so much attention to them, and remember them so long." Voltaire betrayed his conceit when he attempted to criticise Shakespeare. Balzac and Victor Hugo were two egotists. "There are only three writers of the French language," said Balzac, – "Victor Hugo, Théophile Gautier, and myself." Southey, Young, Pope, Dryden, and Wordsworth betrayed their vanity in an egregious manner. Goldsmith was conspicuously vain at times. Landor had a supreme estimate of his own productions, and wrote to Wordsworth, concerning his "Imaginary Conversations," as follows: "In two thousand years there have not been five volumes in prose equal in their contents to these."160 Voltaire's remark upon Dante served only to illustrate his own spleen and jealousy. "His reputation," said the sarcastic Frenchman, "will continually be growing greater, because there is now nobody who reads him." As for Voltaire's tragedies, De Tocqueville said he could not even read them through, and he doubted if anybody else could. Scott said he read the "Henriade" through, and lived, but it was when he was a young man, and then he read everything. Dr. Johnson once acknowledged that he never read Milton through until he was obliged to do so in compiling his dictionary. Southey said he had read Spenser through about thirty times, and that he could not read Pope once. It was perhaps singular, but Southey, Coleridge, and Wordsworth all failed to appreciate Virgil.

Hannah More tells us that on a certain occasion when she was visiting the Garricks in 1776, David read aloud to herself and Mrs. Garrick her (Hannah's) last poem. "After dinner Garrick read 'Sir Eldred' with all his pathos and all his graces. I think I was never so ashamed in my life; but he read it so superbly that I cried like a child. Only think what a ridiculous thing to cry at the reading of one's own poetry." In another place she says: "Whether my writings have promoted the spiritual welfare of my readers, I know not; but they have enabled me to do good by private charity and public beneficence. I am almost ashamed to say that they have brought me thirty thousand pounds." Burns was affected almost to tears when he heard for the first time George Lockhart, of Glasgow, sing his verses. "I'll be hanged if I knew half their merit until now!" he said. James Hogg, the "Ettrick Shepherd," wrote, "I cannot express what my feelings were at first hearing a song of mine sung by a beautiful young lady in Ettrick to her harpsichord." One recalls in this connection the legend told in Rome of Canova's disguising himself and mingling with the crowd of citizens that he might hear their comments upon a newly unveiled statue just completed by his own hands, and of the great satisfaction he bore away with him at their commendations. Thomas Hood could not suppress his pleasure at listening to the "Song of the Shirt"161 as sung by the poor sorrowing work-people in the London streets, adapted to rude airs of their own composition. Béranger, the song-writer of France, acknowledged a similar delight in hearing his verses sung upon the Parisian boulevards by the common people. Francis Jacox speaks of the first visit of the old poet Ducis to his beloved master, Louis XVIII., when that monarch graciously recited to him some of his own verses. In an ecstasy of delight Ducis exclaimed: "I am more fortunate than Boileau or Racine; they recited their verses to Louis XIV., but my king recites my verses to me!"

Though people are said to be vainer of qualities which they fondly believe they have than of those which they do really possess, still we must allow to genius some latitude in the matter of conceit, since common people exhibit so much of that spirit on no capital at all. Dr. Holmes says of conceit, that "it is to character what salt is to the ocean, – it keeps it sweet and renders it endurable." Perhaps the acme of conceit is reached when Cicero says, "For all my toils and pains I have no recompense here; but hereafter, in heaven, among the immortal gods, I shall look back on my beloved city, and find my reward in seeing her made glorious by my career." Horace, referring to his future fame, says, "I shall not wholly die."

Vanity, says Shakespeare, keeps persons in favor with themselves who are out of favor with all others. He was not himself without a portion of that conceit which he says "in weakest bodies strongest works;" but there is this difference in his share of vanity, – he had, indeed, a genius the gods themselves might envy. He begins one of his sonnets, —

And again he says: —

Sydney Smith's definition occurs to us here, wherein he defines vanity as "proceeding from the supposition of possessing something better than the rest of the world possesses. Nobody is vain of possessing two legs and two arms, because that is the precise quantity of either sort of limb which everybody possesses." Fielding bluntly tells the truth when he says, "There is scarcely any man, however much he may despise the character of a flatterer, but will condescend, in the meanest manner, to flatter himself." We have seen that even Diogenes was gratified by popular praise, not to say flattered thereby; while the fact of his occupying so notable and peculiar an abode argued a degree of pride and vanity. Did not Thoreau also affect humility in his rudely built cabin on the borders of Walden Pond? Certainly the idea of Diogenes and his tub must have occurred to so classic a scholar as the Concord hermit. Southey's appeal to posterity to do him justice, in his letter to his publisher, will be remembered: "My day and popularity will come when I shall have said good-night to the world." De Quincey remarks that posterity is very hard to get at; and Swift thought the present age altogether too free in laying taxes on the next. "Future ages shall talk of this; they shall be famous to all posterity;" whereas their time and thoughts, he believed, would be taken up with present things, as ours are now. Carlyle thought Dr. Johnson's carelessness as to future fame a very remarkable trait in his character.

The vanity of authors is their shame, and ought to be their secret. While it does not necessarily detract from the merit of their excellent productions, it prejudices all by belittling them in our estimation. Oftentimes the career of these notables, as we have seen, has been one of surmounted difficulties and hardships endured for the sake of their chosen calling, embittering their nature, perhaps, yet at the same time tincturing them with an exultant spirit of success.

There are examples in abundance, however, of an opposite character – examples of true modesty and self-forgetfulness – among poets and authors generally. The poet Rogers, as well as Whittier, is a happy example of an equable life with a full share of reasonable blessings. Referring to his irreproachable career, Sheridan told Rogers it was easy for happy people to be good.

says William Robert Spencer. A modest estimate of self sits gracefully upon genius. Listen to Newton: "I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me." Scott was very little tainted with vanity; indeed, he wrote in his diary that no one disliked or despised the "pap" of praise so heartily as he did. He said there was nothing he scorned more, except those persons who seem to praise one in order to be puffed in return. As a rule, he did not entertain a very high opinion of literary people, or, as we have seen, desire to associate with them. He said: "If I encounter men of the world, men of business, odd or striking characters of professional excellence in any department, I am in my element, for they cannot lionize me without my returning the compliment and learning something of them."

Some people think praise so pleasant and agreeable that they cannot have too much of it. Goldsmith said Garrick was a mere glutton of praise, who swallowed all he came across and mistook it for renown, – the fluffy of dunces. Not actors alone, but writers also, are endowed with a very ravenous appetite for the same sort of nutriment. There is a nest of vanity in almost every breast, and according to Burke it is omnivorous. Rochefoucauld declared that men had little to say when not prompted by vanity.

Another example of unbounded self-conceit occurs to us in the instance of the French poet and dramatist Scudéri, the protégé of Cardinal Richelieu. His genius was not to be doubted, but it was deeply shadowed by his vanity, as made manifest in the preface to his literary works, which abounds in gasconade pure and simple. Of his epic poem "Alaric" he says: "I have such a facility in writing verses, and also in my invention, that a poem of double its length would have cost me but little trouble. Although it contains only eleven thousand lines, I believe that longer epics do not exhibit more embellishment than mine." Poor, self-satisfied Scudéri! both he and his works are very nearly forgotten, though he was an honored member of the French Academy.162 John Heyward, poet and jester, a court favorite in the days of Queen Mary, is another example of consummate vanity. He was among the earliest who wrote English plays. In a work which he produced, in 1556, called "The Spider and the Fly," a parable there are seventy-seven chapters, and at the beginning of each is a portrait of the author in various attitudes, either sitting or standing by a window hung with cobwebs. Dryden honestly declared that it was better for him to own his failing of vanity than for the world to do it for him; and adds: "For what other reason have I spent my life in so unprofitable a study? Why am I grown old in seeking so unprofitable a reward as fame? The same parts and application which have made me a poet might have raised me to any honors of the gown." Sometimes Goethe speaks with the true breath of humility, and sometimes quite the reverse. He says, "Had I earlier known how many excellent things have been in existence for hundreds and thousands of years, I should have written no line; I should have had enough else to do." And yet Goethe is not only the most illustrious name in German literature, but one of the greatest poets of any age or nation.

Eugene Sue,163 who was born in luxury, and who need never have written for support, would sit down to write only in full dress, even wearing, as we have seen, kid gloves, – an evidence of vanity which has a precedent in Buffon, who when found engaged in literary work was always curled, powdered, ruffled, and perfumed. N. P. Willis was as dainty in his dress as in his style of writing; and Emerson's remark relative to Nature would well apply to him, when he says, "She is never found in undress." Ruskin, who lives in a glass house as it regards the matter of self esteem, charges Goethe with self-complacency, and at the same time adds that this quality marks a second-rate character. The reader will not be long in determining which of the two was the more amenable to such criticism. Before we dismiss Mr. Ruskin let us quote a letter of his published not long since, and written so late as 1881, addressed to Alexander Mitchell. "What in the devil's name," he writes, "have you to do with either Mr. Disraeli or Mr. Gladstone? You are a student at the university, and have no more business with politics than you have with rat-catching. Had you ever read ten words of mine with understanding, you would have known that I care no more for Mr. Disraeli or Mr. Gladstone than for two old bagpipes with their drones going by steam; but that I hate all Liberalism as I do Beelzebub, and that, with Carlyle, I stand – we two alone now in England – for God and the Queen!" So much for the vanity and conceit of Mr. John Ruskin.

Pope never saw the inside of a university, or indeed of a school worthy of the name. Two Romish priests attempted at different times to do something for him as personal tutors, but with little success. "This was all the teaching I had," he says, "and God knows it extended a very little way." And yet at the age of sixteen he thought himself, as he has recorded, "to be the greatest genius that ever was;" and we are afraid that this vanity and self-conceit never quite deserted him. Atterbury compared him to Homer in a nutshell. Dr. Johnson pronounces Pope's Iliad to be "the noblest version of poetry which the world has ever seen; and its publication must therefore be considered as one of the great events in the annals of learning." As soon as Pope was pecuniarily able he made himself a comfortable home, and brought his aged parents into it and made them happy. He calls his existence "a long disease;" but if he was "sent into this breathing world but half made up," Nature compensated him by the richness with which she endowed his brain. "In the streets he was an object of pity," says Tuckerman; "at his desk, a king." Though his life was embittered in a measure by his physical deformity and by ill-health, he was not lacking in the tenderness of heart which forms the key-note to all domestic happiness. "I never in my life knew," says Bolingbroke, "a man who had so tender a heart for his particular friends, or a more general friendship for mankind." As to his poetry there has always been a great diversity of opinion, but we think it reached the height of art. It is therefore difficult to realize the egotism which could prompt the following couplet from his pen in the ripeness of his fame: —

Colley Cibber was a sharp thorn in Pope's side; he was a witty actor, as well as clever dramatist and mediocre poet. He was chosen poet-laureate in 1730. His most popular comedy was "Love's Last Shift, or the Fool in Fashion," though it divided the honors with the "Careless Husband," in which Cibber himself enacted the principal role. Dr. Johnson disliked him because, "though he was not a blockhead, he was pert, petulant, and presumptuous." On the stage he excelled in almost the whole range of light, fantastic, comic characters; but in poetry, which he much affected, his lyrics were all so bad that his friends pretended he made them so on purpose, and fully justified Johnson's remark that they were "truly incomparable." He was the recipient of a pension of two hundred pounds from George I.

There is a vein of vanity in most of us: few authors or artists are without a share; and, singular to say, it most frequently arises from trivial matters in which there would seem to be the least cause for pride. William Mitford, the author of the "History of Greece," a scholarly and admirable piece of literary work, was most proud of his election to a captaincy in the Southampton militia. To be sure, his literary work challenged some severe criticism; De Quincey said of it, "It is as nearly perfect in its injustice as human infirmity will allow." Carlyle certainly magnified his own calling when he wrote: "O thou who art able to write a book, which once in the two centuries or oftener there is a man gifted to do, envy not him whom they name conqueror or city-builder, and inexpressibly pity him whom they name conqueror or city-burner." Great as he was in authorship, Macaulay in one of his letters remarks, "I never read again the most popular passages of my own works without painfully feeling how far my execution has fallen short of the standard which is in my mind." He is undoubtedly one of the noblest characters in English literature, and his mortal remains very properly rest in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey, – a favorite resort of the great historian during his life. As an example of modest merit we recall the name of Robert Boyle, the Irish chemist and linguist, the great experimental philosopher of the seventeenth century, – he whom some wit called "the father of chemistry and the brother of the Earl of Cork." He translated the Gospels into the Malay language, and published the translation at his own expense; he was besides a thorough Hebrew and Greek scholar. His many published works are all profound and useful. He was chosen President of the Royal Soceity, but refused the honor, from an humble estimate of his own merit, and for the same reason declined a peerage which was tendered to him. We owe to him, according to Boerhaave, "the secrets of fire, air, water, animals, plants, and fossils." Boyle cared nothing for fame.