CHAPTER V. THE FAILINGS OF GENIUS. THE study fire burns for the most part in a quiet, meditative way that fails in with the thought and the talk that are inspired by it. Occasionally, however, it crackles and snaps in an argumentative mood that makes one wonder what sort of communication it is trying to have with the world around it. Is it the indignant protest of some dismembered tree ruthlessly cut down in the morning of life, that energetically but ineffectually sputters itself forth in the glowing heat? Perhaps if Gilbert White, or Thoreau, or Burroughs happened to fill my easy-chair at such a moment, this question might be answered; I, in my ignorance, can only ask it. Of one thing I am certain, however: that when the fire falls into this humor it is quite likely to take Rosalind and myself with it; on such occasions the quiet talk or the long, uninterrupted reading gives place to a discussion which is likely to be prolonged until the back-log falls in two and the ashes lie white and powdering around the expiring embers. Even then the pretty bellows which came several Christmases ago from one whose charm makes it impossible to use the word common even to describe her friendship for Rosalind and myself, are vigorously used to give both fire and talk a few minutes' grace. It is generally concerning some fact or event which disturbs Rosalind's idealization of life that these discussions rise and flourish. This charming woman persists, for instance, in declining to take any account of traits and characteristics in eminent men of letters which impair the symmetry of the ideal literary life; with delightful feminine insistence, she will have her literary man a picturesque ideal, or else will not have him at all. For myself, on the other hand, I am rather attracted than repelled by the failings of great men; in their human limitations, their prejudices, their various deflections from the line of perfect living, I find the ties that link them to myself and to a humanity whose perfection is not only a vague dream of the future, but actually and for the deepest reasons impossible. The faults of men of genius have been emphasized, misrepresented, and exaggerated in a way that makes most writing about such men of no value to those who care for truth. The men are few in every age who can honestly and intelligently enter into and possess the life of a former time; the men who can comprehend a human life that belongs to the past are fewer still. The writers who have been most active, radical, and influential are those whose secret is most likely to escape the search of biographers and critics. Most of what has been written about such men, for instance, as Petrarch, Goethe, Voltaire, Heine, Carlyle, may be wisely consigned to that insatiable spirit of flame which devours falsehoods and crude, worthless stuff with the same appetite which it brings to the choicest books in the world. Men of genius are as much amenable to law as the meanest of their fellow-creatures, but the latter are not always the best interpreters of that law. English criticism owes Carlyle an immense debt for destroying the superstition that every man of letters must be brought to the bar of the Thirty-nine Articles; and criticism in this country is slow to learn from such spirits as Emerson the true standards and measures of greatness. For the most part, ignorance and stupid unbelief have waylaid and attempted to throttle those hardy spirits who have ventured to set foot in the Temple of Fame. Men of genius, as I often tell Rosalind, must always stand a very poor chance with the conventional people; the people, that is, who accept the traditional standards they find about them, and who live on the surface of things. It is the constant tendency of life, like the earth's crust, to cool off and harden; it is the common task of all men of original power to reverse this course of things. A good many men perform this duty in a needlessly offensive manner; they lack the sound sense of Richter, who, when he found that his habit of omitting the omnipresent collar from his toilet set all tongues a-wagging, wisely concluded to conform to fashion in a trivial matter, in order that he might put his whole strength into a struggle on vital principles. And yet there is no reason why a great man should not indulge in his little idiosyncrasy if he chooses to; surely intelligent men and women ought to be about better business than commenting on the length of Tennyson's hair or the roll of Whitman's coat. In a world in which so many people wear the same clothes, live in the same house, eat the same dinner, and say the same things, blessed are the individualities who are not lost in the mob, who have their own thoughts and live their own lives. The case of the man of genius can be put in a paragraph: the conventional people control society; they can never understand him; hence the cloud of misconception and misrepresentation in which he lives and dies. To a man of sensitive temperament this process is often intensely painful; to a man of virile temper it is often full of humorous suggestion. Gifted men take a certain satirical satisfaction in bringing into clear light the innocent ignorance of those whose every word of criticism or laudation betrayed a complete misconception. The charming old story of Sophocles's defense of himself by simply reading to the Athenian jury the exquisite choral ode on Colonos would sound apocryphal if told of a modern jury. The case of Carlyle furnishes a good illustration; among all the mass of writing relating to this man of genius that has been poured upon a defenseless world, it is safe to say that one can count on the fingers of one hand the articles that have betrayed any real understanding of the man. One readily understands, in the light of this and similar past records, the fervor with which Sir Henry Taylor reports Tennyson as saying that he thanked God with his whole heart and soul that he knew nothing, and that the world knew nothing, of Shakespeare but his writings! In these days a man of letters takes his life in his hand when he takes up his pen; the curse of publicity which attaches itself not only to his work but to himself is as comprehensive as an Arab imprecation; it covers his ancestry and his posterity with impartial malediction. When such a dust from rude and curious feet has half suffocated one all his life, he must be ready to say with the Laureate: "Come not, when I am dead, To drop thy foolish tears upon my grave, To trample round my fallen head, And vex the unhappy dust thou wouldst not save. But thou, go by. 'Child, if it were thine error or thy crime I care no longer, being all unblest ; Wed whom thou wilt, but I am sick of Time, And I desire to rest. Pass on, weak heart, and leave me where I lie Go by, go by." There is a respect, a deference, a deep and vital affection, in which the true man of letters finds one of his sweetest and purest rewards; the mind and heart which hospitably receive his truest thought |