and philosophers, sufficiently meets the question, without rendering discussion necessary. When we behold the greatest minds that the world has ever produced, doomed to denial in their own dwellings-they to whom the world. willingly defers, wanting a similar acknowledgment at their own household altars-when we look at the mournful fortunes of Milton, Dante, Shakspeare, Byron-to say nothing of a thousand others-baffled wholly in the enjoyment of such a condition as the common world may rightfully hope to entertain-the question naturally occurs,does the peculiar moral constitution of such persons forbid their enjoyment of social happiness? Is there anything in their mental or physical organization which precludes them from sharing in the delights of a condition in which other men naturally look to find their greatest? Has it been decreed by a compensative Providence, that the endowments which render certain men more famous than all others, shall, at the same time, leave them hopeless of that human happiness which all others may enjoy? Are they, thus proudly possessed of an eminent solitude in the world of fame, to be doomed to a corresponding solitude in the world of the affections? If this be not the decree, it is at all events the too frequent history, and the passing consideration of the subject has but too universally prompted the conviction, that there is a native incapacity in the constitution of the man of genius, for the just appreciation or enjoyment of the common household privilege of happiness accorded to the hopes of other men. The world has come to believe that, if intellectual superiority be not absolutely incompatible with domestic peace and sympathy, it is certainly coupled with certain dangerous ingredients of character, which grievously impair its prospects in this respect. The descriptive phrase, genus irritabile vatum, properly applied to the squabbles of poets among themselves, is muttered as a warning to the woman who proposes to peril her fortunes in the keeping of such persons; and it is now just as habitual to ascribe to their peculiar organization all the misfortunes of the household of which they constitute a part, as if there were no longer any question that the providence of God had made strife. inseparable from song, and had decreed the alliance of a moral discord with the growth and utterance of all its holiest harmonies. But let us look into this matter. It is not reasonable to suppose that, in bestowing his highest gifts of talent and genius, God has withheld the humble but more absolutely essential privileges of peace and sympathy. The allotment of great intellectual endowment does not appear necessarily to preclude the possibility of realizing those moderate enjoyments of domestic life, which are clearly within the reach of common men. We cannot persuade ourselves to believe that there is any inherent unfitness for happiness in that heart and intellect which we honor in proportion to their catholic appreciation of all human resources. Shall he, we naturally ask, who bestows such delight on others, be himself denied the enjoyment of pleasures such as he imparts? Shall he who so well comprehends the true sources of human comfort, be denied to approach the fountain to which he leads all other footsteps? Surely, there would be an injustice in this denial which would be inconsistent equally with the policy and the benevolence of God. We might as well forbid that the ox should feed, by which the grain is trodden out; that he who sows should never reap, and that the handmaid who draws for us the water at the way-side, should herself faint with thirst in the midst of her abundant fountain. We must look to another origin for this strange dispensation, rather than the decrees of Providence, whose justice, when properly regarded, is above all mortal cavil or complaint. We must look to certain vexatious inequalities between the endowments of the individual and his training, together with the uses for which he is employed, for the solution of this difficulty. One of the great secrets of genius is the possession of rare sensibilities, which render it exquisitely impressible by all external influences. It is painfully appreciative of the latent and the spiritual, and its faculty, in this particular, is that which we commonly describe as the imaginative. This makes it keenly alive to things and thoughts of which the surrounding world knows nothing. The passing cloud, the hurrying wing, the vague imperfect tone borrowed from night and distance, the glance of an eye,-these are all influences by which its consciousness is informed, and its moods affected. Its highest office is to fix and preserve these spiritual and passionate moods of heart and mind, which appeal but feebly to other men, unless symbolized by the endowing art of the imagination. Its uses render this appreciative office the great duty of its existence. Its faculties grow from its susceptibilities and imply an exquisite delicacy in the instrument which it employs, which we may easily conceive, renders it as exquisitely liable to derangement. The instrument which gives forth fine harmonies, such as "awaken the soul under the ribs of death," must naturally require to be touched by a nice hand, no less heedful of its sensibilities than of its powers. It is an instrument which we require shall speak for all the moods of men. The spirit which rules its secret nature must be prepared to penetrate into all affections and declare for all the most opposite conditions of the living heart. The keenest pangs, the slightest sorrows; the faint but growing hues of jealousy; the first blush of love; the wild delirium of passion; hope and fear; wrath and tenderness; hostility and devotion;-all these it is called upon with most rapid transition to depict;-it must delineate fancies the most delicate; dreams and hopes the most subtle and spiritual;-must seize upon and fix the most passing emotions;-anticipate and embody to the mind its most foreign tendencies;-conceive the past, predict the future, and, like the chameleon, assume the hue of all the objects, for the moment, with which it comes in contact. These transitions, which belong to the ordinary duties of the imagination, while they imply extráordinary powers, as certainly declare for susceptibilities and sensibilities which are equally wonderful. It is inevitable that such an instrument as that of genius, must be something kindred to all the caprices of mood and tone which it needs, or to which it seeks to give utterance. It must forever quicken with new births, in sentiment and temper as well as thought, congenial with the passing necessities or influences with which it wrestles. The creative faculty must be variously pregnant under the embrace of change. It puts forth a thousand antennæ which are continually employed in feeling for the myriad emotions that work in the breast of man and nature. These necessarily conduct it to those catholic sympathies through which the poet finds that world-wide knowledge, by which he continues to live through countless ages, surviving your historians, your philosophers, your teachers of wise saws and modern instances, entering, as he does, into the very nature of the thing he delineates, and speaking from the sympathies within his own heart, while he seems only to be describing yours. The philosopher and the historian die out from human memories only because they have not lived in human sympathies. The poet has the advantage over other laborers. He becomes a part of the voice which he employs, and thus furnishes humanity the only organ through which its most precious emotions could find speech. His life is thus one continued guage for the offices and instincts of the moral nature. In measuring the sympathies and sufferings of that world which he is thus required to represent, what wonder that his own nature should be liable to disorder and disease? He pays a terrible penalty for the extraordinary powers which he employs, as an individual at once living in himself and for himself, and for a world in which, as a mere individual, he can hope for no such extraordinary sympathies as are due to the labors of his genius. That two-fold being which he is required to manage, it is not always in his power to individualize. He cannot divest himself of his singing robes when he wishes, since the imagination which stirs within him, once vigorously excited, is not to be put away for his mere mortal garments. The caprices, accordingly, through which he errs, and the moods which in conflict make his torture, belong to the struggle between his immediate personal, and his general and universal nature. Hence his infirmities, his contradictions of character, his perverseness, the fluctuations of his temper, the soreness of his sensibilities, the wild incoherence of his complaints. He does not act like other men, for the simple reason that he is not like other men. His commerce is with other objects and influences. He is not worldly prosperous, since, unlike other men, he does not confine his thoughts to the one world in which he lives. He makes many worlds, and is but too frequently absent from that in which you probably find him erring. He does not regard your judgments, as he so frequently finds himself before other tribunals-that of the past, whose great shadows he would emulate- that of the future, whose judgments he would inform-that of faith and power and principalities, in whose birth he is himself an agent, possibly an unconscious one, and whose coming he prepares the way for, and predicts. Such a creature will need all human indulgence, if he can hope for but little human sympathy. With endowments. thus peculiar, difficult and contradictory, his training must be judicious in high degree, or his existence is endangered, and his moral uses likely to be set at nought. We have said that we do not perceive that, necessarily, his endowments preclude his happiness. But we must allow that they render the work of domestic and social training, upon which alone all human happiness depends, a work of immense difficulty and very doubtful result. A noble mother-for most of the important training of the young devolves upon the woman-a noble mother who will tenderly chide and carefully correct; who will lift the ambition by gradual exercises; who will subdue the passions without outraging the nature; who will control the will without vexing the spirit; who will inform the moral, by daily habitual duties which will accord with the sympathies while tasking the abilities;-such a mother will probably so train a boy of genius, as that he shall be strengthened for his peculiar offices, without falling into unnecessary conflicts with society, or perversely forfeiting the delights of his own household. But the chances against such good fortune, to the imaginative nature, are as an hundred to one. Clearly, the woman who allies herself to such a being-unless with such a training, can look for no continued sunshine, for no smooth serene of progress in which the lights shall be uniform and steady, passing with equal gradations from day to night, and from night to day again. If the ordinary person, badly trained, is a thing of fitful moods and violent passions, what must be the increase of evil, from such a training, in the case of an individual, whose very constitution implies caprice, and sensibilities always in excitement? The wife of such a lord must look for caprices, and must learn to regard them as the inevitable concomitants, under the best of circumstances, of the intellect that she should honor, and the man we suppose her to esteem. If she will thus consider them, the alliance may not be without its compensations;-but to recognise these as subjects only of complaint and bitterness; to hold them in dislike and to exhibit her aversion; herself to suffer, or appear to suffer, from their exhibition, and to provoke a corresponding annoyance in his mind, because of her idle repinings over an infirmity which is absolutely inseparable from his nature,is surely as little the part of wisdom, as it is of common sympathy and affection. She, therefore, who links her fate VOL. XII.—No. 23.· 18 |