THE

INFIRMITIES OF GENIUS.

CHAPTER I.

THE EFFECTS OF LITERARY HABITS.

It is generally admitted that literary men are an irritable race, subject to many infirmities, both of mind and body; that worldly prosperity and domestic happiness are not very often the result of their pursuits.

Eccentricity is the "badge of all their tribe;" and so many errors accompany their career, that fame and frailty would almost seem to be inseparable companions. Perhaps it is wisely ordained that such should be the case, to check the pride of human intellect, and to render those of humbler capacities contented with their lot, to whom nature has denied the noblest of her gifts.

It is the unfortunate tendency of literary habits, to enamour the studious of the seclusion of the closet, and to render them more conversant with

the philosophy and erudition of bye-gone times, than with the sentiments and feelings of their fellow-men. Their knowledge of the world is, in a great measure, derived from books, not from an acquaintance with its active duties; and the consequence is, that when they venture into its busy haunts, they bring with them a spirit of uncompromising independence, which arrays itself at once against every prejudice they have to encounter: such a spirit is but ill calculated to disarm the hostility of any casual opponent, or in the circle where it is exhibited "to buy golden opinions" of any "sorts of people." If the felicitous example of the poet of the drawing room seduce them into the haunts of fashionable life, they find themselves still less in their element; the effort to support the dignity of genius in a common-place conversation, costs them, perhaps, more fatigue than the composition of half a volume would occasion in their study. Or if any congenial topic engage attention, they may have the good sense to subdue their ardour, and endeavour to assume an awkward air of fashionable nonchalance; they may attempt to be agreeable, they may seem to be at ease, but they are on the stilts of literary abstraction all the time, and they cannot bow them down to kiss the crimson robe of good society with graceful homage. But these

are the minor inconveniences that arise from long indulgence in literary habits; the graver ones are those that arise from impartial health and depressed spirits, the inevitable consequences of excessive mental application. Waywardness of temper, testiness of humour and capriciousness of conduct, result from this depression; and under such circumstances the errors of genius are estimated too often by their immediate consequences, without any reference to predisposing causes. The fact is, the carriage of genius is unlikely to conciliate strangers, while its foibles are calculated to weary even friends, and its very glory to make bitter rivals of its contemporaries and comrades.

Accordingly we find that its ashes are hardly cold, before its frailties are raked up from the tomb, and baited at the ring of biography, till the public taste is satiated with the sport. It is only when its competitors are gathered to their fathers, and the ephemeral details of trivial feuds, of petty foibles, and private scandal, are buried with their authors, that the conduct of genius begins to be understood, and its character to be fairly represented.

The luminary itself at last engages that attention which had previously been occupied with the specks upon its disc. It was nearly a quarter of

a century before "the malignant principles of Milton" gave the world sufficient time to ascertain there was such a poem in existence as Paradise Lost. Only three thousand copies of it were sold in eleven years, while eight thousand copies of a modern novel have been disposed of in as many days; but we need not go back to the age of Milton for evidence of the tardy justice that is done to genius. Ten years ago the indiscretions of Shelly had rendered his name an unmentionable one to ears polite; but there is a reaction in public opinion, and whatever were his follies, his virtues are beginning to be known, and his poetry to be justly appreciated. It unfortunately happens that those who are disqualified by the limits of their capacities for the higher walks of learning, are those who take upon them the arduous duties of the literary Rhadamanthus, and at whose hands the "masters of the world" generally receive the roughest treatment. The competency of such a tribunal, however, must not be questioned, even when a Byron is at its bar: genius has not the privilege of being judged by its peers, for the difficulty would be too great of impannelling a jury of its fellows.

But how few of those who fasten on the infirmities of great talent, for the purpose of knawing