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BY THE AUTHOR OF "CURIOSITIES OF LITERATURE."

"Poi che veder voi stessi non potete,

Vedete in altri almen quel che voi siete."

Cina da Pistoia, addressed to the Eyes of his Mistress.

"ALEXANDRIAN EDITION."

NEW-YORK:

WILLIAM PEARSON & CO., 106 NASSAU STREET.

1835.

PREFACE.

I Published, in 1795, "an Essay on the Literary Character;" to my own habitual and inherent defects, were superadded those of my youth; the crude production was, however, not ill received, for the edition disappeared; and the subject was found to be more interesting than the writer.

During the long interval which has elapsed since the first publication, the little volume was often recalled to my recollection, by several, and by some who have since obtained celebrity; they imagined that their attachment to literary pursuits had been strengthened even by so weak an ef fort. An extraordinary circumstance has occurred with these opinions ;a copy which has accidentally fallen into my hands, formerly belonged to the great poetical genius of our times; and the singular fact that it was twice read by him in two subsequent years, at Athens, in 1810 and 1811, instantly convinced me that the volume deserved my attention. I tell this fact assuredly, not from any little vanity which it may appear to betray, for the truth is, were I not as liberal and as candid in respect to my own productions, as I hope I am to others, I could not have been gratified by the present circumstance; for the marginal notes of the noble writer convey no flattery-but amidst their pungency and sometimes their truth, the circumstance that a man of genius could, and did read, this slight effusion at two different periods of his life, was a sufficient authority, at least for an author, to return it once more to the anvil; more knowledge, and more maturity of thought, I may hope, will now fill up the rude sketch of my youth; its radical defects, those which are inherent in every author, it were unwise for me to hope to remove by suspending the work to a more remote period.

It

may be thought that men of genius only should write on men of genius; as if it were necessary that the physician should be infected with the disease of his patient. He is only an observer, like Sydenham who confined himself to vigilant observation, and the continued experience of tracing the progress of actual cases (and in his department, but not in mine) in the operation of actual remedies. He beautifully says "Whoever describes a violet exactly as to its colour, taste, smell, form, and other properties, will find the description agree in most particulars with all the violets in the universe."

Nor do I presume to be any thing more than the historian of genius ; whose humble office is only to tell the virtues and the infirmities of his

heroes. It is the fashion of the present day to raise up dazzling theories of genius; to reason a priori; to promulgate abstract paradoxes; to treat with levity the man of genius, because he is only a man of genius. I have sought for facts, and have often drawn results unsuspected by myself, I have looked into literary history for the literary character. I have always had in my mind an observation of Lord Bolingbroke: “Abstract, or general propositions, though never so true, appear obscure or doubtful to us very often till they are explained by examples; when examples are pointed out to us, there is a kind of appeal, with which we are flattered, made to our senses, as well as to our understandings. The instruction comes then from our authority; we yield to fact when we resist speculation." This will be truth long after the encyclopedic geniuses of the present age, who write on all subjects, and with most spirit on those they know least about, shall have passed away; and time shall extricate truth from the deadly embrace of sophistry.

THE LITERARY CHARACTER, &c.

CHAPTER I.

ON LITERARY CHARACTERS.

SINCE the discovery of that art which multiplies at will the productions of the human intellect, and spreads them over the universe in the consequent formation of libraries, a class or order of men has arisen, who appear throughout Europe to have derived a generic title in that of literary characters; a denomination which, however vague, defines the pursuits of the individual, and serves, at times, to separate him from other professions.

Formed by the same habits, and influenced by the same motives, notwithstanding the difference of talents and tempers, the opposition of times and places, they have always preserved among themselves the most striking family resemblance. The literary character, from the objects in which it concerns itself, is of a more independent and permanent nature than those which are perpetually modified by the change of manners, and are more distinctly national. Could we describe the medical, the commercial, or the legal character of other ages, this portrait of antiquity would be like a perished picture; the subject itself would have altered its position in the revolutions of society. It is not so with the literary character. The passion for study; the delight in books; the desire of solitude and celebrity; the obstructions of life; the nature of their habits and pursuits; the triumphs and the disappointments of literary glory; all these are as truly described by Cicero and the younger Pliny, as by Petrarch and Erasmus, and as they have been by Hume and Gibbon. The passion for collecting together the treasures of literature and the miracles of art, was as insatiable a thirst in Atticus as in the French Petresc, and in our Cracherodes and Townleys. We trace the feelings of our literary contemporaries in all ages, and every people who have deserved to rank among polished nations. Such were those literary characters who have stamped the images of their minds on their works, and that other race, who preserve the circulation of this intellectual coinage;

-Gold of the Dead,

Which Time does still disperse, but not devour. D'Avenant's Gondibert, c. v. s. 38. These literary characters now 'constitute an important body, diffused over enlightened Europe, connected by the secret links of congenial pursuits, and combining often msensibly to themselves in the same common labours. At London, at Paris, and even at Madrid, these men feel the same thirst, which is allayed at the same foun. tains; the same authors are read, and the same opinions are formed.

Contemporains de tous les hommes,
Et citoyens de tous les lieux.

De la Mothe.

Thus an invisible brotherhood is existing among us, and those who stand connected with it are not always sensible of this kindred alliance. Once the world was made uneasy by rumours of the existence of a society, founded by that extraordinary German, Rosicrucius, designed for the search of truth and the reformation of the sciences. Its statutes were yet but partially promulgated but many a great principle in morais, many a result of science in the concentrated form of an axiom; and every excellent work which suited the views of the author to preserve anonymous, were myste

riously traced to the president of the Rosicrucians, and not only the society became celebrated, but abused. Descartes, when in Germany, gave himself much trouble to track out the society, that he might consult the great searcher after Truth, but in vain! It did not occur to the young reformer of science in this visionary pursuit, that every philosophical inquirer was a brother, and that the extraordinary and mysterious personage, was indeed himself! for a genius of the first order is always the founder of a society, and, wherever he may be, the brotherhood will delight to acknowledge their master.

These Literary Characters are partially described by Johnson, not without a melancholy colouring. 'To talk in private, to think in solitude, to inquire or to answer inquiries, is the business of a scholar. He wanders about the world without pomp or terror, and is neither known nor valued but by men like himself.' But eminent Genius accomplishes a more ample design. He belongs to the world as much as to a nation; even the great writer himself, at that moment, was not conscious that he was devoting his days to cast the minds o his own contemporaries, and of the next age, in the mighty mould of his own, for he was of that order of men whose individual genins often becomes that of a people. A prouder conception rose in the majestic mind of Milton, of that lasting fame and perpetuity of praise, which God and good men have consented shall be the reward of those whose published labours advance the good of mankind.'

Literature has in all ages, encountered adversaries from causes sufficiently obvious; but other pursuits have been rarely liable to discover enemies among their own votaries. Yet many literary men openly, or msidiously, would lower the Literary character, are eager to confuse the ranks in the republic of letters, wanting the virtue which knows to pay its tribute to Caesar: while they maliciously confer the character of author on that " Ten Thousand," whose recent list is not so much a muster roll of heroes, as a table of population.* that We may allow the political economist to suppose an author is the manufacturer of a certain ware for a very paltry recompense," as their seer Adam Smith has calculated. It is useless to talk to people who have nothing but millions in their imagination, and whose choicest works of art are spinning jennies; whose principle of labour' would have all men alike die in harness; or, in their carpentry of human nature, would convert them into wheels and screws, to work the perplexed movements of that ideal machinery called capital'-these may reasonably doubt of the utility of this unproductive' race. Their heated heads and temperate hearts may satisfy themselves that 'that unprosperous race of men, called men of letters,' in a system of political economy, must necessarily occupy their present state in society, much as formerly when scholar and a beggar seem to have been terms very nearly synonimous.'† But whenever the political economists shall feel,-a calculation of time which who would dare to furnish them with ?-that the happiness and prosperity of a people include something more permanent and more evident than the wealth of a nation,' they may form another notion of the literary character.

A more formidable class of ingenious men who derived their reputation and even their fortune in life from their literary character, yet are cold and heartless to the inter

*See a recent biographical account of ten thousand authors. Wealth of Nations. v. I, p. 182.

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