screen, and DOWN IT WENT -exhibiting, besides the enraged individual to whom the voice belonged,-what do you think?

A bottle of wine and some cakes?
No.

A few oranges, perhaps?

By no means.

A sandwich!

Not in the least.

What then?

-A pot of ale and some bread and cheese. There was no harm in it. Geniuses have made many a hearty meal upon bread and cheese, and been glad that they could get it; only, somehow, the highly poetical dignity of the recitation, the immense idealism of the lecturer, and the aristocracy of the satin smallclothes, had not prepared the spectators for so unsophisticate a refreshment; and they were glad to pretend an outcry of alarm and sympathy, in order to drown what they could of the otherwise inextinguishable laughter which shook the place.

What followed we totally forget, perhaps because we came away; but never shall we forget thee, and thy publicities and retirements, honest Ned Pounchy.

LX. THE FORTUNES OF GENIUS.

In the Atlas, the other day, was an article, under the above title, the following passages of which induce us to make some remarks upon them. We regret we cannot copy the whole, it is so well written, and shows such a relish of pleasure, and sympathy with pain. But our limits forbid.

"An acquaintance," says the writer, "with the biography of illustrious musicians proves that they reason incorrectly, and with a short sight, who eternally talk of having the path of genius smoothed, and of setting it above circumstances; for the lives of eminent men of this class display the most admirable energies developed, and the most enthusiastic projects brought to bear, purely by the pressure of the very annoyances sought to be removed. Possession of the creative faculty presupposes a superiority to adverse circumstances and lowthoughted care;' and Goldsmith's poet, sitting in his garret with a worsted stocking on his head,

Where the Red Lion, staring o'er the way,

Invites each passing stranger that can pay, in spite of bailiffs, writs, debts, duns, and milk-scores, the most horrible that even Hogarth imagined, was still a happy fellow. The individual Mr. Jones, seated before a delicate leg of lamb and a bottle of sherry, is an. abstraction of the Mr. Jones who owes 2841. 188. 4d., and has, as the Dutchmen say, nix to pay. Satisfied that he would pay if he

could, which is all that is necessary to place the morale of his character upon high ground, he leaves the affairs of the world to right themselves, and enjoys the everlasting dayrule of the imagination. [How well said is this! So it was with Fielding, with Goldsmith, with Steele, and others honourable in literature, and so also with Handel, with Mozart, and Weber, in music; and it is one of the kindly recompenses of nature, by which she contrives, on the whole, to adjust so equitably the good and the evil in this life, that where injury to the individual arises from an excess of sympathy with the mass, that injury is commonly but lightly felt."

We were not aware that the trials of these musicians in pecuniary affairs were so great. The following information respecting Mozart is as startling as it is affecting :-"Who thinks, when he looks over the six great operas of Mozart, and admires the Shakspearian knowledge of character, and the thoughtful discrimination appearing in every movement of them, that those master-pieces were produced amidst a tumult of arrests, and of the lowest annoyances that ever embroiled a life? Nay, it is even said that the family of Mozart at times wanted common necessaries. Adversity may have been a sharp thorn in the side of so gentle and enjoying a spirit as Mozart; but it would be affectation to deplore the circumstances that have put the musical world in possession of their most valued treasures."-And here follows something awful respecting Handel,an awful man. The hurried dashes and dative cases of the writer ("to his quarrel with Senesino"-" to his madness and rage”—“ to his palsy"-) are like an agitato accompaniment to the facts. "The twenty or thirty folio volumes bearing the names of Handel's oratorios, which alone transmit his name to posterity, when we contemplate them in some well-ordered library, carry no thought of their having been produced after the composer had received the first signal of death in a stroke of palsy which disabled his arm. Ruin and disease, that fill the minds of men of more feeble powers with thoughts of the narrow coffin and the shroud, made Handel immortal. We owe the Messiah' and 'Israel in Egypt' to the composer's obstinate temper-to his quarrel with Senesino and the nobility-to his making rash engagements with singers that compelled him to withdraw his last guinea from the funds to satisfy them-to his madness and rage-to his palsy to his proceeding to the vapourbaths of Aix-la-Chapelle, whence, with the purgation of his humours, reason and religion returned, and persuaded him that there was another style of music yet untried, more likely than operas to suit the grave character of the English. Then followed in rapid succession his immortal oratorios, works in which the pure flame of his genius never shone more

brightly, though produced at a late period of life, commenced after the attack of a threatening and fatal disorder, and ended in total blindness."

The question thus opened by the writer in the 'Atlas' is a great puzzle. We confess that in many respects we take the same view of it as himself; for we reverence the past; we are inclined to think best of whatever has taken place, since it has taken place, to conclude that good and evil somehow have adjusted themselves in the best manner; and we have such belief in the predominance of happy over unhappy feelings in the minds of men of genius, that we sometimes think they would have had an unfair portion of joy in their life, had their lot been less counterbalanced by difficulties, ill-health, or whatsoever their troubles may have been.

But the question branches off into some others, which it may not be well for society to lose sight of; especially as by the efforts which Providence incites them to make for the common good, it would seem, that however necessary some portion of evil may always be for the proper relish of good, there may not always exist a necessity for it to an amount so large. One of these collateral questions we shall put.

Is it certain that the men of genius abovementioned would not have written as much, or as finely, under happier circumstances?

It is natural enough to conclude, that men so careless in worldly matters as Steele and Fielding, and with such a relish of the moment before them, when it contained the least drop of sweet, would perhaps have written nothing at all. Frightful supposition! And yet is the supposition likely, considering that very relish? Is it natural for people to be delighted, and hold their tongue? To have fame at their command, and not command it? Or was it necessary for Handel to be so extremely pained, before he could give us his sense of the passionate and the sublime? Was there not suffering enough for him, short of rage and madness? No firmament over his head, nor graves under his feet? Perhaps he yet needed his af flictions be it so, since they have happened; —but might it not be perilous in future, seeing that we have become alive to such questions, to run the risk of steeling the hearts of people against the struggles of genius, if not for the latter's sake, yet for their own, and ultimately, by that process, for both? Whatsoever happens in the world without our being aware of it, we take to be one thing; what otherwise, to be another; and fate and consequence become modified accordingly. If the pain should remain the same after all, we still cannot be certain that it is necessary, however it will become us to hope so when it be past. The peril, meanwhile, is, that we shall be blunting our own feelings, and those of genius too.

Beaumont was of opinion that a man of genius could no more help putting his thoughts on paper, than a traveller in a burning desert can help drinking when he sees water.

"I know full well, that, no more than the man
That travels through the burning deserts, can
When he is beaten with the raging sun,
Half smother'd in the dust, have power to run
From a cool river, which himself doth find,
Ere he be slaked; no more can he whose mind
Joys in the Muses, hold from that delight,
When Nature and his full thoughts bid him write."

Could Fielding have helped writing Tom Jones' (the perfectest prose-fiction in the language) whether he had been in trouble or not! Could Steele have helped throwing his lighter, happier graces, round the muse of his friend Addison? Would Goldsmith's craving for reputation have allowed him to be silent with his pen (which was admirable), when he could not even refrain in company with his tongue (which was nothing)? Or does the enjoying critic of the Atlas,' whose articles are like variations upon the musical beauties they criticise, dwelling upon them, and winding them in congenial tones round his heart, really think it would have been possible for Mozart to possess all that abundance of the soul of love and pleasure, and not cry aloud-not burst forth and blossom like the peach-trees in spring! not come pouring down from a hundred fountains of song into the surging sea of the orchestra, like the summer clouds from the mountains?

We grant that certain noble kinds of pain may be necessary to produce certain sublimities of composition, whether in musical or other writing; but need the composer be stimulated with the lowest and most humiliating cares, to induce him to write at all, supposing him to be a real genius? Perhaps he would not write so much; but are we sure even of that, supposing him to be put into a condition quite suitable to his nature? Steele and Fielding and Mozart would not have written all the identical same works which they produced; but are we sure they would not have produced as many, or even better? Well-fed birds sing in cages; but the more philosophic of their jailors (strange people !) discern something in the best of their imprisoned songs, inferior to their "wood-notes wild." Does the throstle on the bough, in order to pour gushes of melody from his heart, require a string to his leg, or a blink from some bailiff snake!

6

Walter Scott assuredly would not have written all his novels, had he not thought eircumstances required it; but we should most likely have had his best. Waverley' he wrote for love, when he did not dream that he should get a sixpence by it; and Old Mortality' and The Antiquary' soon followed the publication of that novel-partly, no doubt, for profit, but much also by reason of love encouraged, and

out of a love of the sense of power. These, his best, we should have had; and he would not have been killed by writing his worst.— Oh, Scotland! Oh, England! Oh, Europe! we might say, for he belonged to all,-how could you suffer him to die?

And Burns-that other "glory and shame" of this island-he did not get (so to speak) a penny for his writings; for though, no doubt, he did get a good deal more, yet that was not the reason why he produced them; and numbers of his songs he gave away. Yes; he, the glorious ploughman and born gentleman, gave his songs away, free as the bird that he took for his crest. Now Burns, if any man ever did, wrote for love, and not for money. Yet his life was full of pecuniary distress.

And observe how many men of genius have written abundantly, who have had no sordid cares, certainly none that writing settled for them, in a pecuniary sense. Chaucer is an illustrious instance. Spenser another-Milton (though poor) another--Beaumont and Fletcher, Pope, Swift, Addison, Gibbon, Hume, Hooker, Sterne, Lamb, Wordsworth, Jeremy Taylor-in short, almost all our best, and all the Greek, Roman, and Italian men of genius (for nobody ever got obolus or crazia for his writings in the classical countries, ancient or modern). In Italy there is no payment of authors, any more than there was among the countrymen of Anacreon and Ovid; yet we have had, nevertheless, the Dantes, Petrarchs, and Ariostos. The Homers, to be sure, got their "feed," in the minstrel times of Greece; but nobody supposes that those amazing rhapsodists would never have opened their mouths but for King Alcinous's pork-chops.

Then, among musicians-Haydn, we believe, was not distressed; nor the Corellis and Paesiellos.

Gluck was rich. Nor have the best of the painters been poor,-the Raphaels, Michael Angelos, and Titians. On the contrary, with the exception of Rembrandt, those who have been best off in worldly affairs have generally been most abundant in pictorial produce,sometimes, it is true, by help of the influx of wealth, as in Titian's case; but, at any rate, necessity was not the stimulant. Nor did patronage make them idle. No; because it was true, and lit on true men. The watered tree bore, because it possessed the seed. Do not Hummel, Spohr, and others, write, and write well, though made as comfortable as church-canons in those little snug chapelmasterships of theirs, of which we are told so delightfully in the Ramble among the Musicians in Germany?'

·

Often and often, we doubt not-perhaps in all instances has inconsistency of position in men of genius been mistaken for idleness. It may be possible, in many cases, that temperament, or even too much thought, or other conflicting impulses, may produce something,

in the appearance, which "the world calls idle;" but the true conflicting impulses, in perhaps all instances, have arisen from incompatibility of calls upon the attention. He who is forced to do incompatible or uncongenial things, does them badly; or he sings, perhaps, at all events, and sings well; but sometimes he cannot sing at all,-the wires of the cage of his necessity press too hard upon him-he wants breathing-room, nature, comfort; he sings at last, partly because he is forced, partly because it solaces him. But try the humane expedient of rescuing him from his worst cares, and see how he would sing then ;-if not his most, yet surely his best. At least, so it appears to us.

Blessings, nevertheless, say we, with the genial philosopher of the Atlas,' upon the trouble and sorrow even of a sordid kind, if we could not have had certain men of genius without them; and blessings, at all events, upon the beauty into which they are converted, and the divine way which Nature has of making bitterness itself blossom and become medicinal. But let us take care how we sow opinions, unqualified, the fruits of which may intoxicate weak heads in after times-with careless assumption, if writers-with selfish references to Providence and necessity, if the arbiters of the fate of writers. Most writers of any ability are pretty well off in these times, and have a good patron in the public. But a time may come, (are we sure that it has in no case happened already?) when, by the very process of the abundance of writings, genius may want support; and let us not prepare our children's children to refuse it.

The absurdity of a tragedy, unfortunately, is not always an argument against its chances; but to show how very absurd this principle of leaving men of genius to their fate might become, if driven to all its consequences, let our contemporary, who understands and loves a joke run to seed (no man better), take the following scene between the future patron of a musical genius, and an emissary he has despatched to inquire into his circumstances.

Patron. Well, Dick, and how did you find him? Will the composition of the new opera go on swimmingly?

Emissary. According to your Grace, it will, for he is horribly off. P.-Good.

What, in pressing want, eh? Can't afford to be idle?

E.-If he did, he could not eat. The butcher would not trust him. The butcher says he is too honest a man to be trusted; he is such a child.

P.-Excellent! just like your man of genius. And the butcher is a shrewd dog. But our new Mozart must not starve quite; we'll take care of that. Then he has finished, I presume, that capital scene of the feast, with that wonderful joyous dance? and that droll chorus, with the corpulent man in it?

F

E. He has ; with a lawyer's letter on each side of him, and a face haggard with headache.

P. (rubbing his hands.)-Capital! We are sure then, you think, of the whole opera?

E. There is no doubt of it. His five children were looking out of the window, wondering whether the baker would come.

P.-You rejoice me. We shall have a brilliant audience. And what did he say to you? E.-Oh! he smiled, as usual, and laughed, and said he wondered at his spirits, considering his headach; but I thought I almost saw the tears in his eyes, as he said it.

P.-A true genius! That's the way he gets his pathos, Dick. The man is all fire and feeling.

E.—I suspect he would have been glad of a little more "fire" yesterday, for his servant told me he had no coals.

P.-Bravo! Poor fellow! Oh, it's clear we shall do capitally. We must not let his fingers be cold, however, nor the baker fail his children.

E. Did your Grace ever think of trying what a course of comfort would do for him?

P.-A course of what? Ruin, Dick, ruin. I never did, of course; but who'd write if they could help it?

E. (aside.)-Not you, God knows; for it's as much as you can do to spell. Yet this is the great opera patron whom our "new Mozart calls a "good kind of man, not over imaginative!"

LXI.-POETS' HOUSES.

A PAPER in Mr. Disraeli's 'Curiosities of Literature' upon Literary Residences,' is very amusing and curious; but it begins with a mistake in saying that "men of genius have usually been condemned to compose their finest works, which are usually their earliest ones, under the roof of a garret ;" and the author seems to think, that few have realized the sort of house they wished to live in. The combination of "genius and a garret" is an old joke, but little more. Genius has been often poor enough, but seldom so much so as to want what are looked upon as the decencies of life. In point of abode, in particular, we take it to have been generally lucky as to the fact, and not at all so grand in the desire as Mr. Disraeli seems to imagine. Ariosto, who raised such fine structures in his poetry, was asked indeed how he came to have no greater one when he built a house for himself; and he answered, that "palaces are easier built with words than stones." It was a pleasant answer, and fit for the interrogator; but Ariosto valued himself much upon the snug little abode which he did build, as may be seen by the in

scription still remaining upon it at Ferrara *; and we will venture to say for the cordial, tranquillity-loving poet, that he would rather live in such a house as that, and amuse himself with building palaces in his poetry, than have undergone the fatigue, and drawn upon himself the publicity, of erecting a princely mansion, full of gold and marble. No mansion which he could have built would have equalled what he could fancy; and poets love nests from which they can take their flightsnot worlds of wood and stone to strut in, and give them a sensation. If so, they would have set their wits to get rich, and live accordingly; which none of them ever did yet, at any rate, not the greatest. Ariosto notoriously neglected his "fortunes"- in that sense of the word. Shakspeare had the felicity of building a house for himself, and settling in his native town; but though the best in it, it was nothing equal to the "seats" outside of it (where the richer men of the district lived); and it appears to have been a "modest mansion," not bigger, for instance, than a good-sized house in Red Lion-street, or some other old quarter in the metropolis. Suppose he had set his great wits to rise in the state and accumulate money, like Lionel Cranfield, for example, or Thomas Cromwell, the blacksmith's son. We know that any man who chooses to begin systematically with a penny, under circumstances at all favourable, may end with thousands. Suppose Shakspeare had done it; he might have built a house like a mountain. But he did not,-it will be said, because he was a poet, and poets are not getters of money. Well; and for the same reason, poets do not care for the mightiest things which money can get. It cannot get them health, and freedom, and a life in the green fields, and mansions in fairy-land; and they prefer those, and a modest visible lodging.

Chaucer had a great large house to live in,— a castle, because he was connected with royalty; but he does not delight to talk of such places: he is all for the garden, and the daisied fields, and a bower like a "pretty parlour." His mind was too big for a great house; which challenges measurement with its inmates, and is generally equal to them. He felt elbow-room, and heart-room, only out in God's air, or in the heart itself, or in the bowers built by Nature, and reminding him of the greatness of her love.

Spenser lived at one time in a castle,-in Ireland, a piece of forfeited property, given him for political services; and he lived to repent it: for it was burnt in civil warfare, and his poor child burnt with it; and the poet was driven back to England, broken-hearted. But

* See an engraving of the house itself, with its inscription, in the Gallery of Portraits, No, XXVIII. Article Ariosto. But it wants the garden-ground which be longed to it.

look at the houses he describes in his poems, -even he who was bred in a court, and loved pomp, after his fashion. He bestows the great ones upon princes and allegorical personages, who live in state and have many servants, (for the largest houses, after all, are but collections of small ones, and of unfitting neighbourhoods too); but his nests, his poetic bowers, his delicier and amanitates, he keeps for his hermits and his favourite nymphs, and his flowers of courtesy; and observe how he delights to repeat the word "little," when describing them. His travellers come to "little valleys," in which, through the tree-tops, comes reeking up a "little smoke," (a "chearefull signe, quoth the poet,) and

'whole and entire to lie,

In no unactive ease, and no unglorious poverty." " The Garden.

"I confess," says he, in another essay (on Greatness), "I love littleness almost in all things,- a little convenient estate, a little cheerful house, a little company, and a very little feast; and if ever I were to fall in love again (which is a great passion, and therefore I hope I have done with it), it would be, I think, with prettiness, rather than with majestical beauty."

(What charming writing! —how charming as writing, as well as thinking! and charming in both respects, because it possesses the only real perfection of either,-truth of feeling).

of contentment his mind delighted finally to rest.

"A little lowly heritage it was

Down in a dale, hard by a forest's side,
Far from resort of people, that did pass
In travel to and fro. A little wide
There was an holy chappell edifyde,
Wherein the hermit dewly wont to say
His holy things each morn and eventide;
Thereby a crystall streame did gently play,
Which from a sacred fountain welled forth alway.

Arrived there, the little house they fill,
Nor look for entertainment where none was;
Rest is their feast, and all things at their will;
The noblest mind the best contentment has."

he have ever been so happy in such a place as he supposed (blest are the poets, surely, in enjoying happiness even in imagination !) yet he would have been less comfortable in a house less to his taste.

Dryden lived in a house in Gerrard-street (then almost a suburb), looking, at the back, into the gardens of Leicester House, the mansion of the Sidneys. Pope had a nest at Twickenham, much smaller than the fine house since built upon the site; and Thomson another at Richmond, consisting only of the ground-floor of the present house. Everybody knows what a rural house Cowper lived in. Shenstone's was but a farm adorned, and his bad health unfortunately hindered him from

filled it with

"A thousand demi-gods on golden seats,"

was content if he could but get a "gardenhouse" to live in, as it was called in his time; that is to say, a small house in the suburbs, with a bit of garden to it. He required nothing but a tree or two about him, to give him "airs of Paradise." His biographer shows us, that he made a point of having a residence of this kind. He lived as near as he could to the wood-side and the fields, like his fellowpatriot, M. Beranger, who would have been the Andrew Marvell of those times, and adorned his great friend as the other did, or like his Mirth (l'Allegro) visiting his Melancholy.

And hear beloved Cowley, quiet and plea

sant as the sound in his trees :-"I never had any other desire so strong, and so like to covetousness, as that one which I have had always, that I might be master at last of a small house and large garden, with very moderate conveniences joined to them, and there dedicate the remainder of my life only to the culture of them, and study of nature; and there, with no design beyond my wall,

poor man! instead of a wife; which was being very "one-sided" in his poetry-and he found them more expensive than Miss Dolman would have been. He had better have taken poor Maria first, and got a few domestic cares of a handsome sort, to keep him alive and moving. Most of the living poets are dwellers in cottages, except Mr. Rogers, who is rich, and has a mansion, looking on one of the parks; but there it does look upon grass and trees. He will have as much nature with his art as he can get. Next to a cottage of the most comfortable order, we should prefer, for our parts, if we must have servants and a household, one of those good old mansions of the Tudor age, or some such place, which looks like a sort of cottage-palace, and is full of old corners, old seats in the windows, and old memories. The servants, in such a case, would probably have grown old in one's family, and become friends; and this makes a great difference in the possible comfort of a great house. It gives it old family warmth.