Long since this was written, a fact has been recorded of CHENIER, the French dramatic poet, which parallels the horrid tale of Collot D'Herbois, which some have been willing to doubt from its enormity. It is said, that this monster, in the revolutionary period, when he had the power to save the life of his brother André, while his father, prostrate before a wretched son, was imploring for the life of an innocent brother, remained silent; it is further said that he appropriated to himself a tragedy which he found among his brother's manuscripts. "Fratricide from literary jealousy," observes the relator of this anecdote, 66 was a crime reserved for a modern French revolutionist."* There are some pathethic stanzas which André was composing in his last moments, when awaiting his fate; the most pathetic of all stanzas is that one which he left unfinished Peut-être, avant que l'heure en cercle promenée Ait posé, sur l'émail brillant, Dans les soixante pas où sa route est bornée, Le sommeil du tombeau pressera ma paupière At this unfinished stanza was the pensive poet summoned to the guillotine! CHAPTER XVI. The domestic life of genius.-Defects of great compositions attributed to domestic infelicities.-The home of the literary character should be the abode of repose and silence.-Of the Father. Of the Mother.-Of family genius.-Men of genius not more respected than other men in their domestic circle.-The cultivators of science and art do not meet on equal terms with others, in domestic life.—Their neglect of those around them.-Often accused of imaginary crimes. WHEN the temper and the leisure of the literary character are alike broken, even his best works, the too faithful mirrors of his state of mind, will participate in its inequalities; and surely the incubations of genius, in its delicate and shadowy combinations, are not less sensible in their operation than the composition of sonorous bodies, where, while the warm metal is settling in the mould, even an unusual vibration of the air during the moment of fusion will injure the tone. Some of the conspicuous blemishes of several great com * Edinburgh Review, xxxv. 159. positions may be attributed to the domestic infelicities of their authors. The desultory life of CAMOENS is imagined to be perceptible in the deficient connexion of his epic; and MILTON'S blindness and divided family prevented that castigating criticism, which otherwise had erased passages which have escaped from his revising hand. He felt himself in the situation of his Samson Agonistes, whom he so pathetically describes His foes' derision, captive, poor, and blind. Even LOCKE complains of his "discontinued way of writing," and "writing by incoherent parcels," from the avocations of a busy and unsettled life, which undoubtedly produced a deficiency of method in the disposition of the materials of his great work. The careless rapid lines of DRYDEN are justly attributed to his distress, and indeed he pleads for his inequalities from his domestic circumstances. JOHNSON often silently, but eagerly, corrected the "Ramblers" in their successive editions, of which so many had been despatched in haste. The learned GREAVES offered some excuses for his errors in his edition of "Abulfeda," from "his being five years encumbered with lawsuits, and diverted from his studies." When at length he returned to them, he expresses his surprise" at the pains he had formerly undergone,' but of which he now felt himself " unwilling, he knew not how, of again undergoing." GOLDONI, when at the bar, abandoned his comic talent for several years; and having resumed it, his first comedy totally failed: "My head," says he, "was occupied with my professional employment; I was uneasy in mind and in bad humour." A lawsuit, a bankruptcy, a domestic feud, or an indulgence in criminal or in foolish pursuits, have chilled the fervour of imagination, scattered into fragments many a noble design, and paralysed the finest genius. The distractions of GUIDO's studies from his passion for gaming, and of PARMEGIANO's for alchemy, have been traced in their works, which are often hurried over and unequal. It is curious to observe, that CUMBERLAND attributes the excellence of his comedy, The West Indian, to the peculiarly happy situation in which he found himself at the time of its composition, free from the incessant avocations which had crossed him in the writing of The Brothers. "I was master of my time, my mind was free, and I was happy in the society of the dearest friends I had on earth. The calls of office, the cavillings of angry rivals, and the gibings of newspaper critics, could not reach me on the banks of the Shannon, where all within-doors was love and affection. In no other period of my life have the same happy circumstances combined to cheer me in any of my literary labours." The best years of MENGS' life were embittered by his father, a poor artist, and who, with poorer feelings, converted his home into a prison-house, forced his son into the slavery of stipulated task-work, while bread and water were the only fruits of the fine arts. In this domestic persecution, the son contracted those morose and saturnine habits which in afterlife marked the character of the ungenial MENGS. ALONSO CANO, a celebrated Spanish painter, would have carried his art to perfection, had not the unceasing persecution of the Inquisitors entirely deprived him of that tranquillity so necessary to the very existence of art. OVID, in exile on the barren shores of Tomos, deserted by his genius, in his copious Tristia loses much of the luxuriance of his fancy. We have a remarkable evidence of domestic unhappiness annihilating the very faculty of genius itself, in the case of Dr. BROOK TAYLOR, the celebrated author of the "Linear Perspective." This great mathematician in early life distinguished himself as an inventor in science, and the most sanguine hopes of his future discoveries were raised both at home and abroad. Two unexpected events in domestic life extinguished his inventive faculties. After the loss of two wives, whom he regarded with no common affection, he became unfitted for profound studies; he carried his own personal despair into his favourite objects of pursuit, and abandoned them. The inventor of the most original work suffered the last fifteen years of his life to drop away, without hope, and without exertion; nor is this a solitary instance, where a man of genius, deprived of the idolised partner of his existence, has no longer been able to find an object in his studies, and where even fame itself has ceased to interest. The reason which ROUSSEAU alleges for the cynical spleen which so frequently breathes forth in his works, shows how the domestic character of the man of genius leaves itself in his productions. After describing the infelicity of his domestic affairs, occasioned by the mother of Theresa, and Theresa herself, both women of the lowest class and the worst dispositions, he adds, on this wretched marriage, "These unexpected disagreeable events, in a state of my own choice, plunged me into literature, to give a new direction and diversion to my mind; and in all my first works I scattered that bilious humour which had occasioned this very occupation." Our author's character in his works was the very opposite to the one in which he appeared to these low people. Feeling his degradation among them, for they treated his simplicity as utter silliness, his personal timidity assumed a tone of boldness and originality in his writings, while a strong personal sense of shame heightened his causticity, and he delighted to contemn that urbanity in which he had never shared, and which he knew not how to practise. His miserable subservience to these people was the real cause of his oppressed spirit calling out for some undefined freedom in society; and thus the real Rousseau, with all his disordered feelings, only appeared in his writings. The secrets of his heart were confided to his pen. "The painting-room must be like Eden before the Fa no joyless turbulent passions must enter there"-exclaims the enthusiast RICHARDSON. The home of the literary character should be the abode of repose and of silence. There must he look for the feasts of study, in progressive and alternate labours; a taste "which," says GIBBON, "I would not exchange for the treasures of India." ROUSSEAU had always a work going on, for rainy days and spare hours, such as his Dictionary of Music:" a variety of works never tired; it was the single one which exhausted. METASTASIO looks with delight on his variety, which resembled the fruits in the garden of Armida 66 E mentre spunta l'un, l'altro mature. While one matures, the other buds and blows. Nor is it always fame, or any lower motive, which may induce the literary character to hold an unwearied pen. Another equally powerful exists, which must remain inexplicable to him who knows not to escape from the listlessness of life-it is the passion for literary occupation. He whose eye can only measure the space occupied by the voluminous labours of the elder Pliny, of a Mazzuchelli, a Muratori, a Montfaucon, and a Gough, all men who laboured from the love of labour, and can see nothing in that space but the industry which filled it, is like him who only views a city at a distance the streets and the edifices, and all the life and popu lation within, he can never know. These literary characters projected their works as so many schemes to escape from uninteresting pursuits; and, in these folios, how many evils of life did they bury, while their happiness expanded with their volume! Aulus Gellius desired to live no longer than he was able to retain the faculty of writing and observing. The literary character must grow as impassioned with his subject as Elian with his "History of Animals;" "wealth and honour I might have obtained at the courts of princes; but I preferred the delight of multiplying my knowledge. I am aware that the avaricious and the ambitious will accuse me of folly; but I have always found most pleasure in observing the nature of animals, studying their character, and writing their history." Even with those who have acquired their celebrity, the love of literary labour is not diminished-a circumstance recorded by the younger Pliny of Livy. In a preface to one of his lost books, that historian had said that he had obtained sufficient glory by his former writings on the Roman history, and might now repose in silence; but his mind was so restless and so abhorrent of indolence, that it only felt its existence in literary exertion. In a similar situation the feeling was fully experienced by HUME. Our philosopher completed his history neither for money nor for fame, having then more than a sufficiency of both; but chiefly to indulge a habit as a resource against indolence.* These are the minds which are without hope if they are without occupation. Amidst the repose and silence of study, delightful to th literary character, are the soothing interruptions of the voices of those whom he loves, recalling him from his abstractions into social existence. These re-animate his languor, and moments of inspiration are caught in the emotions of affection, when a This appears in one of his interesting letters first published in the Literary Gazette, Oct. 20, 1821.-[It is addressed to Adam Smith, dated July 28, 1759, and he says, "I signed an agreement with Mr. Millar, where I mention that I proposed to write the History of England from the beginning till the accession of Henry VII.,; and he engages to give me 14007. for the copy. This is the first previous agreement ever I made with a bookseller. I shall execute the work at leisure, without fatiguing myself by such ardent application as I have hitherto employed. It is chiefly as a resource against idleness that I shall undertake the work, for as to money I have enough; and as to reputation what I have wrote already will be sufficient, if it be good; if not, it is not likely I shall now write better."] N |