Dr. Samuel Parr, whom Macaulay p.r.o.nounced to be the greatest scholar of his age, was a very hard-working literary genius, sensitive more especially to the tender emotions, so that he would weep like a woman when listening to any affecting story. He was very erratic and imaginative, having a special horror of the east wind, which he believed had both a moral and physical power over him. Sheridan knew this very well, and kept the Doctor a prisoner in the house for a whole fortnight by fixing the weatherc.o.c.k in that direction. The Doctor was not without his share of conceit, founded upon the possession of acknowledged talent and ability. He once said in a miscellaneous a.s.sembly, pertinent to the subject before the company: "England has produced three great cla.s.sical scholars: the first was Bentley, the second was Porson, and the third modesty forbids _me_ to mention."
In glancing through the records of the past no name upon the roll of fame strikes the eye of appreciation more pleasantly than that of Sir Philip Sidney, whose life has been called poetry put in action. He lived amid contemporary applause, and his memory is the admiration of all. The bravest of soldiers, he was also the gentlest of sons, equally ill.u.s.trious for moral qualities and for intellectual genius, controlled by "that chast.i.ty of honor which felt a stain like a wound." No incident in history is more familiar than that of this exhausted warrior resigning the cup of water to a fainting soldier, whose need, he said, was greater than his own. Sidney was one of the brightest ornaments of Queen Elizabeth"s court. Lord Brooke, who was his intimate friend, says of him: "Though I lived with him and knew him from a child, yet I never knew him other than a man with such steadiness of mind, lovely and familiar gravity, as carried grace and reverence above greater years.
His talk was ever of knowledge, and his very play tended to enrich the mind." His death occurred at the age of thirty-two, from a wound in battle, the result of his self-abnegation. He was in full armor, but seeing the marshal of the camp unprotected, he took off his armor and gave it to him, thus exposing himself to the mortal wound which he received. Fuller says, "He was slain before Zutphen, in a small skirmish which we may sadly term a great battle, considering our heavy loss therein."
Victor Hugo was banished from France for his opposition to the _coup d"etat_. He was ever true to his convictions without counting the cost.
"If there is anything grander than Victor Hugo"s genius," said Louis Blanc, "it is the use which he has made of it." He affords us an instance of the highest fame and the favor of fortune culminating in ripe old age. When Hugo was but a rising man, he was still looked upon by the elder litterateurs with considerable jealousy. At the time when he was first an aspirant for the honors of the French Academy, and called on M. Royer-Collard to solicit his vote, the st.u.r.dy veteran professed entire ignorance of his name. "I am the author of "Notre Dame de Paris," "Marion Delorme," "Les Derniers Jours d"un Cond.a.m.ne," etc."
"I never heard of them," said Collard. "Will you do me the honor of accepting a copy of my works?" said Victor Hugo, with perfect urbanity.
"I never read new books," was the cutting reply.[169] But the time came presently when not to know the author of "Les Miserables" was to argue one"s self unknown. When he had reached the age of sixty-three he wrote on a bit of sketching paper accompanying a scene he wished to delineate in the "Toilers of the Sea:" "On the face of this cardboard I have sketched my own destiny,--a steamboat tossed by the tempest in the midst of the monstrous ocean; almost disabled, a.s.saulted by foaming waves, and having nothing left but a bit of smoke which people call glory, which the wind sweeps away, and which const.i.tutes its strength."
Improvidence has ever been a distinctive and a common feature in the lives of men of genius. Sir Thomas Lawrence, the celebrated English portrait-painter, was an ill.u.s.trious example. Of his natural genius there was ample evidence even in childhood, when at the age of six years he produced in crayon in a very few moments accurate likenesses of eminent persons. At the age of twenty-three he succeeded Sir Joshua Reynolds as first painter to the king. He received a hundred guineas each for his portraits,--head and bust,--and one thousand if full-length, which was a large price for those days; and yet he was always embarra.s.sed for money, and died deeply in debt while president of the Royal Academy.
Thomas Moore was very improvident; and though he realized over thirty thousand pounds from his literary productions, yet his family were obliged to live in the most economical manner, often experiencing serious deprivation of the ordinary comforts of life. "His excellent wife," says Rogers, "contrived to maintain the whole family upon a guinea a week; and he, when in London, thought nothing of throwing away that sum weekly on hackney-coaches and gloves." In order to escape the payment of his just debts, Moore was finally obliged to go to Paris, where, Rogers tells us, he frittered away a thousand pounds a year.[170]
Lamartine and the elder Dumas are notable examples of gross improvidence,--the first being reduced almost to beggary before his death, and supported solely by the liberal contributions of his admirers, while the latter was much of his life either squandering gold profusely or dodging his honest creditors.
Richard Savage, the unfortunate poet and dramatist, pa.s.sed his life divided between beggary and extravagance. His undoubted genius and ability as an author attracted the hearty friendship of Johnson and Steele, both of whom made earnest efforts to save him from himself; but dissolute habits had taken too firm a hold of him. It is also honorable to Pope that he was his steady and consistent friend almost to the close of his life. Savage"s ill-conceived poem of "The b.a.s.t.a.r.d" was intended to expose the cruelty of his mother, who was responsible in the main for the wreck of his life. He finally died a prisoner for debt in Bristol jail. Undoubtedly Dr. Johnson was right when he said that the miseries which Savage underwent were sometimes the consequence of his faults, and his faults were often the effect of his misfortunes.
The period of which we are writing has been vividly described by Macaulay, from whom we quote:--
"All that is squalid and miserable might now be summed up in the word Poet. That word denoted a creature dressed like a scarecrow, familiar with compters and sponging-houses, and perfectly competent to decide on the comparative merits of the Common Side in the King"s Bench prison and of Mount Scoundrel in the Fleet. Even the poorest pitied him; and they well might pity him. For if their condition was equally abject, their aspirings were not equally high, nor their sense of insult equally acute. To lodge in a garret up four pair of stairs, to dine in a cellar among footmen out of place, to translate ten hours a day for the wages of a ditcher, to be hunted by bailiffs from one haunt of beggary and pestilence to another,--from Grub Street to St. George"s Field, and from St.
George"s Field to the alleys behind St. Martin"s church,--to sleep on a bulk in June and amidst the ashes of a gla.s.s-house in December, to die in a hospital and to be buried in a parish vault, was the fate of more than one writer who, if he had lived thirty years earlier, would have been admitted to the sittings of the Kitcat or the Scriblerus club, would have sat in Parliament, and would have been intrusted with emba.s.sies to the High Allies; who, if he had lived in our time, would have found encouragement scarcely less munificent in Albemarle Street or in Paternoster Row.
"As every climate has its peculiar diseases, so every walk of life has its peculiar temptations. The literary character a.s.suredly has always had its share of faults, vanity, jealousy, morbid sensibility. To these faults were now superadded the faults which are commonly found in men whose livelihood is precarious, and whose principles are exposed to the trial of severe distress. All the vices of the gambler and of the beggar were blended with those of the author. The prizes in the wretched lottery of book-making were scarcely less ruinous than the blanks. If good fortune came, it came in such a manner that it was almost certain to be abused.
After a month of starvation and despair, a full third night or a well-received dedication filled the pocket of the lean, ragged, unwashed poet with guineas. He hastened to enjoy those luxuries with the images of which his mind had been haunted while he was sleeping amidst the cinders and eating potatoes at the Irish ordinary in Shoe Lane. A week of taverns soon qualified him for another year of night-cellars. Such was the life of Savage, of Boyse, and of a crowd of others. Sometimes blazing in gold-lace hats and waistcoats; sometimes lying in bed because their coats had gone to pieces, or wearing paper cravats because their linen was in p.a.w.n; sometimes drinking champagne and Tokay with Betty Careless; sometimes standing at the window of an eating-house in Porridge island, to snuff up the scent of what they could not afford to taste,--they knew luxury; they knew beggary; but they never knew comfort. These men were irreclaimable. They looked on a regular and frugal life with the same aversion which an old gypsy or a Mohawk hunter feels for a stationary abode, and for the restraints and securities of civilized communities."
Notwithstanding Douglas Jerrold received a thousand pounds per annum from "Lloyd"s Weekly Newspaper" alone, besides a respectable income from "Punch" and other literary labor, he never had a guinea in his pocket; every penny was forestalled, and he left his family in extreme penury.
Goldsmith, as we have seen, was the most improvident of men, and died owing two thousand pounds; which led Dr. Johnson to say, "Was ever poet so trusted before?" It was at this time that Boswell, who was always a little jealous of Goldsmith"s intimacy with Johnson, made some disparaging remarks about the dead poet; whereupon Johnson promptly replied, "Dr. Goldsmith was wild, sir, but he is so no more!" "Cover the good man who has been vanquished," says Thackeray,--"cover his face and pa.s.s on!" Some families seem to inherit impecuniosity; Goldsmith came thus rightfully, so to speak, by his weakness in this respect.[171]
Sheridan, according to Byron, wrote the best comedy, the "School for Scandal;" the best opera, the "Duenna;" the best farce, the "Critic;"
and delivered the most famous oration of modern times. With genius and talents which ent.i.tled him to the highest station, he yet sank into difficulties, mostly through inexcusable improvidence, outraging every principle of justice and of truth, finally dying in neglect. The reader will be apt to recall the anecdote ill.u.s.trative of Sheridan"s impecuniosity. As he was hacking his face one day with a dull razor, he turned to his son and said, "Tom, if you open any more oysters with my razor, I"ll cut you off with a shilling." "Very well, father," was the reply; "but where is the shilling to come from?" Sheridan thought if he had stuck to the law he might have done as well as his friend Erskine; "but," he added, "I had no time for such studies; Mrs. Sheridan and myself were often obliged to keep writing for our daily leg or shoulder of mutton, otherwise we should have had no dinner; yes, it was a _joint_ concern."
All authorities combine in p.r.o.nouncing the great speech of Sheridan on the impeachment of Warren Hastings to be one of the grandest oratorical efforts known to us. But the persuasive power of eloquence was never better ill.u.s.trated than in the instance of Mirabeau when he pleaded his own case. His liaison with the Marchioness de Mounier surpa.s.ses, in fact, all stories of romance. Mirabeau induced her to run away with him, for which she was seized and thrown into a convent, while he escaped to Switzerland.[172] He was brought to trial, was convicted of contumacy, and sentenced to lose his head. The lady escaped and once more joined him; together they pa.s.sed into Holland, where they were a second time arrested, she being again immured in a convent and he confined in the Castle of Vincennes, where he remained for more than three years. After his liberation he obtained a new trial, pleaded his own case, and by the impa.s.sioned power of his all-commanding eloquence he terrified the court and the prosecutor, melted the audience to tears, obtained a prompt reversal of his sentence, and even threw the whole cost of the suit upon the prosecution.[173]
When the stupid, ill-bred Judge Robinson insulted Curran by reflecting upon his poverty while he was arguing a case before him, saying to him that he "suspected his law library was rather contracted," Curran answered the servile office-holder in words of aptest eloquence and cutting irony. "It is true, my lord," said Curran, with dignified respect, "that I am poor, and the circ.u.mstance has somewhat curtailed my library; my books are not numerous, but they are select, and I hope they have been perused with proper disposition. I have prepared myself for this high profession rather by the study of a few good works than by the composition of a great many bad ones. I am not ashamed of my poverty, but I should be ashamed of my wealth could I have stooped to acquire it by servility and corruption. If I rise not to rank, I shall at least be honest; and should I ever cease to be so, many an example shows me that ill-gained reputation, by making me the more conspicuous, would only make me the more universally and the more notoriously contemptible!"
[174]
Speaking of eloquence, Hazlitt describes how he walked ten miles to hear Coleridge the poet preach, and declared that he could not have been more delighted if he had heard the music of the spheres. The names of Fox, Pitt, Grattan, Patrick Henry, Daniel Webster, Wendell Phillips, and Rufus Choate, with many others, crowd upon the mind as we dwell upon the theme of eloquence in oratory. There is eloquence of the pen as well as of the tongue; Socrates of old, celebrated for his n.o.ble oratorical compositions, was of so timid a disposition that he rarely ventured to speak in public. He compared himself to a whetstone, which will not cut, but which readily enables other things to do so; for his productions served as models to other orators.
We have myriads of examples showing us that accident has often determined the bent and development of genius. Accident may not, however, create genius; it is innate, or it is not at all. Cowley tells us that when quite young he chanced upon a copy of the "Faerie Queene,"[175] nearly the only book at hand, and becoming interested he read it carefully and often, until enchanted thereby he became irrevocably a poet. The apple that fell on Newton"s head with a force apparently out of all proportion to its size, led him to ponder upon the fact, until he deduced the great law of gravitation and laid the foundation of his philosophy. It was Shakespeare"s youthful roguery which drove him from his trade of wool-carding and necessitated his leaving Stratford. A company of strolling actors became his first new a.s.sociates, and he took up with their business for a while; but dissatisfied with his own success as an actor he turned to writing plays, and thus arose the greatest dramatist the world has produced.
Moliere, who was of very low birth, being often taken as a lad to the theatre by his grandfather, was thus led to study the usages of the stage, and came to be the greatest dramatic author of France.
"Tartuffe," which he wrote a hundred and twenty years ago, still holds the stage, as well as many others of his inimitable productions. He was the Shakespeare of France. Hallam says that Shakespeare had the greater genius, but Moliere has perhaps written the better comedies. Corneille fell in love, and was thus incited to pour out his feelings in verse, developing rapidly into a poet and dramatist. He was intended for the law; but love tripped up his heels and made him a poet.
The chance perusal of De Foe"s "Essay on Projects," Dr. Franklin tells us, influenced the princ.i.p.al events and course of his life; so the reading of the "Lives of the Saints" caused Ignatius Loyola to form the purpose of creating a new religious order,--which purpose eventuated in the powerful society of the Jesuits. Benjamin West says, "A kiss from my mother made me a painter."[176] La Fontaine read by chance a volume of Malherbe"s poems,--he who was called "the poet of princes and the prince of poets,"--whereby he became so impressed, that ever after his mind sought expression through the same medium. Rousseau"s eccentric genius was first aroused by an advertis.e.m.e.nt offering a prize for the best essay on a certain theme, which brought out his "Declamation against the Arts and Sciences" (winning the prize thereby), and determined his future career. The husband and father of the woman who nursed Michael Angelo were stone-masons, and the chisel thus became the first and most common plaything put into the child"s hands; hence his earliest efforts were made to apply the hammer and chisel to marble, and the seed was planted which blossomed into art. It was the accidental observation of steam, lifting by its expansive power the heavy iron cover of a boiling pot, that suggested to the mind of James Watt thoughts which led to the invention of the steam-engine. The "Pickwick Papers," d.i.c.kens"s earliest and best literary work, owes its origin to the publisher of a magazine upon which he was doing job-work desiring him to write a serial story to fit some comic pictures which were in the publisher"s possession. The genius was in d.i.c.kens, but it slept.
The sight of Virgil"s tomb, just above the Grotto of Posilippo, at Naples, determined Giovanni"s literary vocation for life. So Gibbon was struck with the idea of writing his "Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire,"
as he sat dreaming amid the ruins of the Forum.[177] When Scott was a mere boy he chanced upon a copy of Percy"s "Reliques of Ancient Poetry,"
which he read with eagerness again and again. As soon as he could get the necessary sum of money, he purchased a copy; and thus the taste for poetry was early instilled into his soul and found after expression in his charming poems. Scott"s first literary effort was the translation of "Gotz von Berlichengen," to which Carlyle ascribes large influence on the great novelist"s future career. He says this translation was "the prime cause of "Marmion" and the "Lady of the Lake," with all that has followed from the same creative hand. Truly a grain of seed that had lighted in the right soil. For if not firmer and fairer, it has grown to be taller and broader than any other tree; and all nations of the earth are still yearly gathering of its fruit."
While in England, not long since, the writer of these pages was told an anecdote relating to Mrs. Siddons which was new to him, and which ill.u.s.trates how often accident has directed the future bent of genius.
When quite a young lady, Sarah Siddons saw in some private gallery an antique statue of great excellence, which had a most electrifying effect upon her. It suggested to her at once the most effective position and manner in which to express intensity of feeling. The arms were close down at the sides, and the hands nervously clenched, while the head was erect, the chest expanded, and the face half in profile. "I cannot express how indelibly the pose took effect upon my imagination," said the great actress many years afterwards, "or the force of the lesson taught me by the marble." If memory serves us correctly, we recall an old engraving of Mrs. Siddons in the character of Lady Macbeth, which would be nearly a reproduction of the pose described.[178]
Accident developed one of the greatest vocalists the world has ever known. Jenny Lind was at the beginning of her life a poor neglected little girl, homely and uncouth, living in a single room of a tumble-down house in a narrow street at Stockholm. When the humble woman who had her in charge went out to her daily labor, she was accustomed to lock Jenny in with her sole companion, a cat. One day the little girl, who was always singing to herself like a canary-bird, "because," as she said, "the song was in her and would come out," sat with her dumb companion at the window warbling her sweet childlike notes. She was overheard by a pa.s.sing lady, who paused and listened, struck by the clearness and trill of the untutored notes. She made careful inquiries about the child and became the patroness of little Jenny, who was at once supplied with a music-teacher. She loved the art of song, and had the true genius for it. Jenny made rapid progress, surprising both patroness and teachers, and presently became the great Queen of Song.
The world knows of Jenny Lind"s splendid fortune, of her professional triumphs, and of her n.o.ble charities; but few, perhaps, have ever pictured her humble girlhood, cooped up in a cheerless room, with only her cat for a companion, in a dull quarter of the Swedish capital. The plain, awkward girl grew up under favorable culture to be a graceful, lovely woman. The courts of Europe treated her as a revered guest; she was covered with laurels and with jewels, but she was ever in disposition and character the same pure, simple Swedish girl. Adulation had no power to spoil this child of Nature and of art. The Swedish public cherish her name as that of their most favored daughter, and honor her for the n.o.ble educational inst.i.tution which she has so liberally founded in her native Stockholm.
Christina Nilsson, another Scandinavian vocalist, was the daughter of an humble Swedish peasant, born in so lowly a cabin that it was difficult to conceive of the name of "home" being applied to it. While yet a child she was obliged to work with the rest of the family in the fields and on the mountain-side. Her sweet voice was first heard at the fairs and peasant weddings, where her simple Scandinavian melodies delighted the a.s.sembled crowds. At one of these public gatherings a man of taste and means heard the child"s voice, and realized the hidden possibilities it indicated. He was a magistrate, and became her patron, taking her from her humble surroundings and supplying her with suitable teachers. She was carefully taught instrumental as well as vocal music, and became both an eminent pianist and singer, developing like her fair countrywoman, Jenny Lind, into a vocalist of grandest genius, and of such ability as the world affords but few examples.
Taglioni was also Scandinavian by birth, having been born at Stockholm, in 1804, of humble parentage, her father being a dancing-master. She had the genius of an artist, which she patiently developed through many dark hours of toil and deprivation, until she made herself acknowledged as queen of the ballet in the great cities of Europe. Her purity of character added a charm to her public performances, giving her a prestige never before enjoyed by any exponent of her art. She finally ama.s.sed a large fortune, and retiring from the stage married Count Gilbert de Voisins. Doubtless many of our readers have paused in their gondolas beneath the windows of her marble palace on the Grand Ca.n.a.l at Venice, to recall the story of the great danseuse, or have looked with pleasure upon her elegant villa on the Lake of Como.
CHAPTER X.
It is not the author"s purpose to treat the names of painters, or indeed those of any other branch of art, especially by themselves. Were any single line to be selected, the peculiarities of its representatives would alone be sufficient to fill a volume. Under the general design of this gossip about genius, the pen is permitted to glide after its own fancy, treating only upon such individuals as readily suggest themselves, and who are ill.u.s.trative of characteristics already introduced.
Upon beginning the chapter before us, we were thinking of John Opie, the distinguished English painter, born in Cornwall in 1761. When Opie was only ten years of age[179] he saw a person who was somewhat accomplished with the pencil draw a b.u.t.terfly. The boy watched the process with marked interest, and as soon as the draughtsman had departed, produced upon a shingle a drawing equally good, which he showed to his mother.
She, good woman, encouraged him, as Mrs. West did her son on a similar occasion; but the father, being a harsh, rude, low-bred man, was constantly punishing the boy for laziness, and for chalking figures, faces, and animals on every stray bit of board or flat surface at hand.
The boy had genius, however; what he required was opportunity. Good fortune sent Dr. Wolcott, better known as "Peter Pindar," that way. He saw the boy"s dawning genius, and helped him with suitable material and some useful suggestions. It was not long before the lad got away from home, quietly aided by his good friend Wolcott, and soon earned money enough to clothe himself decently and to make a start in life. He finally married Amelia, daughter of James Alderson, who afterwards became the well-known auth.o.r.ess Amelia Opie. The husband developed into a distinguished artist, whose historical pictures, "The Death of Rizzio"
and "Jephthah"s Vow," were stepping-stones to his election as President of the Royal Academy. Does not this truthful sketch from life, of a poor wood-sawyer"s son, read like romance?
Genius will a.s.sert itself; it seems useless to strive against it. The secret suggestions of the soul are true, lead us whither they will.
Salvator Rosa was the son of a poor architect who made ineffectual efforts to thwart his son"s predilection for art, but all in vain. The young man, finding that he could not hope for any a.s.sistance from his father, strove all the harder to earn a livelihood by painting, but nearly starved before he reached his majority. About this time the patrons of art in Rome offered a grand prize for the best painting to be submitted at an exhibition to be held in the Eternal City. The young Neapolitan saw his chance, and painted a picture into which he infused all the glowing spirit of the art which burned within him. If it failed, he resolved that no one should know aught of its authorship. It was forwarded anonymously, and received the recognition of being hung in the most favorable position. That picture took the grand prize, the unknown artist being lauded as above t.i.tian. Nought was to be heard for it but praise. This decided the fate of Rosa. He left his humble home near Naples and settled in Rome, where he secured the friendship and intimacy of the greatest men of the day.
Numerous and grand were the pictures sent forth from Rosa"s hand; orders pressed upon him faster than he could fill them, and thus he stepped at once into the highest contemporary fame and fortune.[180] "Salvator possessed real genius," says Ruskin, "but was crushed by misery in his youth." He was not only a painter, but also a poet and a musician; nearly all cultured Italians are the latter. At the grand Carnival of the year 1639 there appeared upon the Corso and in the squares of Rome an actor of fantastic dress, who was marked like all the other revellers on such occasions, but whose name was given as one Formica, of Southern Italy. He attracted both public and private attention by his brilliant wit, his eloquence, and especially by his songs, as he accompanied himself on the lute. He was the hero of the Carnival of that season. By and by the appointed hour arrived when all the revellers unmasked, and lo! the stranger proved to be Salvator Rosa.
Among painters, Rubens is one of the greatest and most familiar names, though Ruskin disparages him by saying that "he is a healthy, worthy, kind-hearted, courtly-phrased animal, without any clearly perceptible traces of a soul, except when he paints children." Rubens became an artist from love of art, and his career was one in which there was far more of sunshine than usually falls to the lot of genius. He throve greatly in a business point of view as well as in art, and became a man of wealth in his native city of Antwerp, where he built a comfortable house and adorned it inside with pencil and brush--the whole, as he estimated it, worth about a thousand pounds sterling. Presently there came to Antwerp the Duke of Buckingham, who coveted the artist"s house.
A negotiation was opened, and Rubens sold it to the Duke for twelve times what it cost, or say in our currency sixty thousand dollars.
Rubens must have possessed wonderful industry, as we judge by the fact that a hundred of his paintings may be found in the Munich Gallery alone, not to mention those contained in other European collections.
Undoubtedly his "Descent from the Cross," now in the Antwerp Cathedral, is his grandest work. Our artist was by no means without his vein of vanity, as evinced by the family picture which he painted, and in which he gives himself due prominence. This picture is placed just above his tomb, back of the altar, in the Church of St. Jacques, at Antwerp. The presumptuousness is increased by the fact that the combined portraits of his first and second wife, his daughter, with his father, grandfather, and himself, are intended to represent a Holy Family, and the painting is typical of that idea. The whole is incongruous and in bad taste.
Vand.y.k.e, Teniers, and Denis Calvart, the instructor of Guido Reni, were all natives of Antwerp. The city owes its attraction to travellers almost solely to the fact that here are so many masterpieces of painting.
William Hogarth was a great and original genius, who wrote comedies pictorially, satirized vice, and depicted all phases of life more in detail than is possible with the pen. He was early apprenticed to a silversmith; but the natural bent of his genius was too apparent and promising not to be encouraged by the study of art. In the dramatic and satirical departments of design he has never been excelled. It has been objected that his pictures are vulgar; but when we remember the period in which they appeared, and also the fact that they undoubtedly convey useful lessons of morality, we shall find ample excuse if not commendation for the artist. In 1753 he published his "a.n.a.lysis of Beauty," in which he maintains that a waving line is essential to beauty. Hogarth composed comedies just as much as did Moliere. It was a singular characteristic of this able designer and artist that he could not successfully ill.u.s.trate another"s work; he is known utterly to have failed in the attempt, though never in the successful ill.u.s.tration of his own ideas. Hogarth was also a historian, inasmuch as every picture he produced represented the manners and customs of the period. The interior scenes give us the exact style of the furniture and minutest domestic surroundings; while out of doors we have all the various modes of conveyance in use, and a faithful picture of the street architecture.
Hogarth died in 1764.
James Spencer, who was a personal friend of Hogarth, began life as a London footman; but the genius of an artist was born in him, and it gradually forced its way to the front. At odd moments he practised drawing and even painting with oils, whenever and wherever he could seize upon a brief chance. It happened that a professional portrait-painter was engaged to make a portrait of the head of the family where Spencer had long acted as footman. When the likeness was finished, he heard his master express some just dissatisfaction at its want of resemblance to the original. Spencer very humbly asked permission of his master to copy the painting and see if he could not get a good likeness. After expressing some astonishment at the request, his master a.s.sented. In a much briefer period than the first artist occupied, and without a single sitting on the part of his employer, Spencer astonished the family by producing not only a remarkable likeness, but an entirely satisfactory painting. With such a start the footman became a professional portrait-painter, and acc.u.mulated the means ere long to set up a fine London establishment.
In an earlier part of this volume we gave numerous instances of genius being at its best in early youth, when, as Burke says, "the senses are unworn and tender, and the whole frame is awake in every part." Of this early development we know of no more striking instance in art than that of Sir Thomas Lawrence, who at the age of ten years surpa.s.sed most of the London portrait-painters both in his certain likenesses and in the general effect of his portraits. He was a remarkable genius, and for a considerable period was the talk of all London.[181] Added to his ability as an artist, young Lawrence was remarkably handsome. Prince h.o.a.re saw something so angelic in his face that he desired to paint him in the character of Christ. In about seven minutes Lawrence scarcely ever failed of producing in crayon an excellent likeness of any person present, and in a manner expressive of both grace and freedom. He succeeded Sir Joshua Reynolds, in due time, as first painter to the king, was knighted in 1815, and five years later became President of the Royal Academy.
To realize under what shadows many an artist has lived, worked, and died, yet who is known to us of the highest genius, we have only to recall some familiar names. Correggio was of very humble birth: and though one of the most original of all the brilliant masters of the sixteenth century, he enjoyed little contemporary fame. His works to-day are held at as high a valuation as those of Raphael, t.i.tian, or Murillo.[182] His modesty was characteristic; his pretension, nothing.
His pictures speak for him, and exhibit the softness, tenderness, and harmony of his nature. Nearly all his work was done at his native city of Correggio and at Parma; nor is he believed ever to have visited Rome.
It was he who, after gazing on one of Raphael"s finest productions, exclaimed, "I also am a painter!"
Correggio was chosen by the canons of the cathedral at Parma to paint for them the "a.s.sumption of the Virgin." It was a subject well fitted to his style, and his conception and execution of the painting were beyond criticism. It may be seen, mellowed by age, in the Parma Cathedral to-day. When the work was done, the priests meanly haggled and found fault with it, in order to reduce the price, which had been previously agreed upon. Finally, they only paid the artist half the promised sum, stealing the balance to supply their secret luxuries. To add insult to their meanness, the priests paid the artist the price in copper coin. He could not refuse the money, for his poverty-stricken family awaited his return with it to supply their pressing needs.