Literary Character of Men of Genius Part 11

But this enthusiasm, prolonged as it often has been by the operation of the imaginative existence, becomes a state of perturbed feeling, and can only be distinguished from a disordered intellect by the power of volition possessed by a sound mind of withdrawing from the ideal world into the world of sense. It is but a step which may carry us from the wanderings of fancy into the aberrations of delirium. The endurance of attention, even in minds of the highest order, is limited by a law of nature; and when thinking is goaded on to exhaustion, confusion of ideas ensues, as straining any one of our limbs by excessive exertion produces tremor and torpor.

With curious art the brain too finely wrought Preys on herself and is destroyed by Thought; Constant attention wears the active mind, Blots out her powers, and leaves a blank behind-- The greatest genius to this fate may bow.

Even minds less susceptible than high genius may become overpowered by their imagination. Often, in the deep silence around us, we seek to relieve ourselves by some voluntary noise or action which may direct our attention to an exterior object, and bring us back to the world, which we had, as it were, left behind us. The circ.u.mstance is sufficiently familiar; as well as another; that whenever we are absorbed in profound contemplation, a startling noise scatters the spirits, and painfully agitates the whole frame. The nerves are then in a state of the utmost relaxation. There may be an agony in thought which only deep thinkers experience. The terrible effect of metaphysical studies on BEATTIE has been told by himself. "Since the 'Essay on Truth' was printed in quarto, I have never _dared_ to read it over. I durst not even read the sheets to see whether there were any errors in the print, and was obliged to get a friend to do that office for me. These studies came in time to have dreadful effects upon my nervous system; and I cannot read what I then wrote without some degree of horror, because it recalls to my mind the horrors that I have sometimes felt after pa.s.sing a long evening in those severe studies."

GOLDONI, after a rash exertion of writing sixteen plays in a year, confesses he paid the penalty of the folly. He flew to Genoa, leading a life of delicious vacuity. To pa.s.s the day without doing anything, was all the enjoyment he was now capable of feeling. But long after he said, "I felt at that time, and have ever since continued to feel, the consequence of that exhaustion of spirits I sustained in composing my sixteen comedies."

The enthusiasm of study was experienced by POPE in his self-education, and once it clouded over his fine intellect. It was the severity of his application which distorted his body; and he then partook of a calamity incidental to the family of genius, for he sunk into that state of exhaustion which SMOLLETT experienced during half a year, called a _coma vigil,_ an affection of the brain, where the principle of life is so reduced, that all external objects appear to be pa.s.sing in a dream.

BOERHAAVE has related of himself, that having imprudently indulged in intense thought on a particular subject, he did not close his eyes for six weeks after; and TISSOT, in his work on the health of men of letters, abounds in similar cases, where a complete stupor has affected the unhappy student for a period of six months.

a.s.suredly the finest geniuses have not always the power to withdraw themselves from that intensely interesting train of ideas, which we have shown has not been removed from about them by even the violent stimuli of exterior objects; and the scenical illusion which then occurs, has been called the _hallucinatio studiosa,_ or false ideas in reverie. Such was the state in which PETRARCH found himself, in that minute narrative of a vision in which Laura appeared to him; and Ta.s.sO, in the lofty conversations he held with a spirit that glided towards him on the beams of the sun. In this state was MALEBRANCHE listening to the voice of G.o.d within him; and Lord HERBEBT, when, to know whether he should publish his book, he threw himself on his knees, and interrogated the Deity in the stillness of the sky.[A] And thus PASCAL started at times at a fiery gulf opening by his side. SPINELLO having painted the fall of the rebellious angels, had so strongly imagined the illusion, and more particularly the terrible features of Lucifer, that he was himself struck with such horror as to have been long afflicted with the presence of the demon to which his genius had given birth. The influence of the game ideal presence operated on the religious painter ANGELONI, who could never represent the sufferings of Jesus without his eyes overflowing with tears. DESCARTES, when young, and in a country seclusion, his brain exhausted with meditation, and his imagination heated to excess, heard a voice in the air which called him to pursue the search of truth; nor did he doubt the vision, and this delirious dreaming of genius charmed him even in his after-studies. Our COLLINS and COWPER were often thrown into that extraordinary state of mind, when the ideal presence converts us into visionaries; and their illusions were as strong as SEEDENBORG'S, who saw a terrestrial heaven in the glittering streets of his New Jerusalem; or JACOB BEHMEN'S, who listened to a celestial voice till he beheld the apparition of an angel; or CARDAN'S, when he so carefully observed a number of little armed men at his feet; or BENVENUTO CELLINI'S, whose vivid imagination and glorious egotism so frequently contemplated "a resplendent light hovering over his shadow."

[Footnote A: In his curious autobiography he has given the prayer he used, ending "I am not satisfied whether I shall publish this book _de veritate_; if it be for thy glory, I beseech thee give me some sign from heaven; if not I shall suppress it." His lords.h.i.+ps adds, "I had no sooner spoken these words but a loud, though gentle noise came from the heavens (for it was like nothing on earth) which did so comfort and cheer me, that I took my pet.i.tion as granted, and that I had the sign I demanded, whereupon also I resolved to print my book. This (how strange soever it may seem) I protest before the eternal G.o.d is true, neither am I any way superst.i.tiously deceived therein, since I did not only clearly hear the noise, but in the serenest sky that ever I saw, being without all cloud, did to my thinking see the place from whence it came."--ED.]

Such minds identified themselves with their visions! If we pa.s.s them over by a.s.serting that they were insane, we are only cutting the knot which we cannot untie. We have no right to deny what some maintain, that a sympathy of the corporeal with the incorporeal nature of man, his imaginative with his physical existence, is an excitement which appears to have been experienced by persons of a peculiar organization, and which metaphysicians in despair must resign to the speculations of enthusiasts themselves, though metaphysicians reason about phenomena far removed from the perceptions of the eye. The historian of the mind cannot omit this fact, unquestionable, however incomprehensible. According to our own conceptions, this state must produce a strange mysterious personage: a concentration of a human being within himself, endowed with inward eyes, ears which listen to interior sounds, and invisible hands touching impalpable objects, for whatever they act or however they are acted on, as far as respects themselves all must have pa.s.sed within their own minds.

The Platonic Dr. MORE flattered himself that he was an enthusiast without enthusiasm, which seems but a suspicious state of convalescence. "I must ingenuously confess," he says, "that I have a natural touch of enthusiasm, in my complexion, but such as I thank G.o.d was ever governable enough, and have found at length perfectly subduable. In virtue of which victory I know better what is in enthusiasts than they themselves; and therefore was able to write with life and judgment, and shall, I hope, contribute not a little to the peace and quiet of this kingdom thereby." Thus far one of its votaries: and all that he vaunts to have acquired by this mysterious faculty of enthusiasm is the having rendered it "at length perfectly subduable." Yet those who have written on "Mystical devotion," have declared that, "it is a sublime state of mind to which whole sects have aspired, and some individuals appear to have attained."[A] The histories of great visionaries, were they correctly detailed, would probably prove how their delusions consisted of the ocular _spectra_ of their brain and the accelerated sensations of their nerves. BAYLE has conjured up an amusing theory of apparitions, to show that HOBBES, who was subject to occasional terrors, might fear that a certain combination of atoms agitating his brain might so disorder his mind as to expose him to spectral visions; and so being very timid, and distrusting his own imagination, he was averse at times to be left alone. Apparitions often happen in dreams, but they may happen to a man when awake, for reading and hearing of them would revive their images, and these images might play even an incredulous philosopher some unlucky trick.

[Footnote A: CHARLES BUTLER has drawn up a sensible essay on "Mystical Devotion." He was a Roman Catholic. NORRIS, and Dr. HENRY MORE, and Bishop BERKELEY, may be consulted by the curious.]

But men of genius whose enthusiasm has not been past recovery, have experienced this extraordinary state of the mind, in those exhaustions of study to which they unquestionably are subject. Tissot, on "The Health of Men of Letters," has produced a terrifying number of cases. They see and hear what none but themselves do. Genius thrown into this peculiar state has produced some n.o.ble effusions. KOTZEBUE was once absorbed in hypochondriacal melancholy, and appears to have meditated on self-destruction; but it happened that he preserved his habit of dramatic composition, and produced one of his most energetic dramas--that of "Misanthropy and Repentance." He tells us that he had never experienced such a rapid flow of thoughts and images, and he believed, what a physiological history would perhaps show, that there are some maladies, those of the brain and the nerves, which actually stretch the powers of the mind beyond their usual reach. It is the more vivid world of ideal existence.

But what is more evident, men of the finest genius have experienced these hallucinations in society acting on their moral habits. They have insulated the mind. With them ideas have become realities, and suspicions certainties; while events have been noted down as seen and heard, which in truth had never occurred. ROUSSEAU'S phantoms scarcely ever quitted him for a day. BARRY imagined that he was invisibly persecuted by the Royal Academy, who had even spirited up a gang of housebreakers. The vivid memoirs of ALFIERI will authenticate what DONNE, who himself had suffered from them, calls "these eclipses, sudden offuscations and darkening of the senses." Too often the man of genius, with a vast and solitary power, darkens the scene of life; he builds a pyramid between himself and the sun. Mocking at the expedients by which society has contrived to protect its feebleness, he would break down the inst.i.tutions from which he has shrunk away in the loneliness of his feelings. Such is the insulating intellect in which some of the most elevated spirits have been reduced. To imbue ourselves with the genius of their works, even to think of them, is an awful thing! In nature their existence is a solecism, as their genius is a paradox; for their crimes seem to be without guilt, their curses have kindness in them, and if they afflict mankind it is in sorrow.

Yet what less than enthusiasm is the purchase-price of high pa.s.sion and invention? Perhaps never has there been a man of genius of this rare cast, who has not betrayed the ebullitions of imagination in some outward action, at that period when the illusions of life are more real to genius than its realities. There is a _fata morgana_, that throws into the air a pictured land, and the deceived eye trusts till the visionary shadows glide away. "I have dreamt of a golden land," exclaimed FUSELI, "and solicit in vain for the barge which is to carry me to its sh.o.r.e." A slight derangement of our accustomed habits, a little perturbation of the faculties, and a romantic tinge on the feelings, give no indifferent promise of genius; of that generous temper which knowing nothing of the baseness of mankind, with indefinite views carries on some glorious design to charm the world or to make it happier. Often we hear, from the confessions of men of genius, of their having in youth indulged the most elevating and the most chimerical projects; and if age ridicule thy imaginative existence, be a.s.sured that it is the decline of its genius.

That virtuous and tender enthusiast, FeNeLON, in his early youth, troubled his friends with a cla.s.sical and religious reverie. He was on the point of quitting them to restore the independence of Greece, with the piety of a missionary, and with the taste of a cla.s.sical antiquary. The Peloponnesus opened to him the Church of Corinth where St. Paul preached, the Piraeus where Socrates conversed; while the latent poet was to pluck laurels from Delphi, and rove amidst the amenities of Tempe. Such was the influence of the ideal presence; and barren will be his imagination, and luckless his fortune, who, claiming the honours of genius, has never been touched by such a temporary delirium.

To this enthusiasm, and to this alone, can we attribute the self-immolation of men of genius. Mighty and laborious works have been pursued, as a forlorn hope, at the certain destruction of the fortune of the individual. Vast labours attest the enthusiasm which accompanied their progress. Such men have sealed their works with their blood: they have silently borne the pangs of disease; they have barred themselves from the pursuits of fortune; they have torn themselves away from all they loved in life, patiently suffering these self-denials, to escape from interruptions and impediments to their studies. Martyrs of literature and art, they behold in their solitude the halo of immortality over their studious heads--that fame which is "a life beyond life." VAN HELMONT, in his library and his laboratory, preferred their busy solitude to the honours and the invitations of Rodolphus II., there writing down what he daily experienced during thirty years; nor would the enthusiast yield up to the emperor one of those golden and visionary days! MILTON would not desist from proceeding with one of his works, although warned by the physician of the certain loss of his sight. He declared he preferred his duty to his eyes, and doubtless his fame to his comfort. ANTHONY WOOD, to preserve the lives of others, voluntarily resigned his own to cloistered studies; nor did the literary pa.s.sion desert him in his last moments, when with his dying hands the hermit of literature still grasped his beloved papers, and his last mortal thoughts dwelt on his "Athenae Oxonienses." MORERI, the founder of our great biographical collections, conceived the design with such enthusiasm, and found such seduction in the labour, that he willingly withdrew from the popular celebrity he had acquired as a preacher, and the preferment which a minister of state, in whose house he resided, would have opened to his views.[A] After the first edition of his "Historical Dictionary," he had nothing so much at heart as its improvement. His unyielding application was converting labour into death; but collecting his last renovated vigour, with his dying hands he gave the volume to the world, though he did not live to witness even its publication. All objects in life appeared mean to him, compared with that exalted delight of addressing, to the literary men of his age, the history of their brothers.

Such are the men, as BACON says of himself, who are "the servants of posterity,"--

Who scorn delights, and live laborious days!

[Footnote A: Louis Moreri was born in Provence in 1643, and died in 1680, at the early age of 37, while engaged on a second edition of his great work. The minister alluded to in the text was M. de Pomponne, Secretary of State to Louis XIV. until the year 1679.--ED.]

The same enthusiasm inspires the pupils of art consumed by their own ardour. The young and cla.s.sical sculptor who raised the statue of Charles II., placed in the centre of the Royal Exchange, was, in the midst of his work, advised by his medical friends to desist; for the energy of his labour, with the strong excitement of his feelings, already had made fatal inroads in his const.i.tution: but he was willing, he said, to die at the foot of his statue. The statue was raised, and the young sculptor, with the s.h.i.+ning eye and hectic flush of consumption, beheld it there--returned home--and died. DROUAIS, a pupil of David, the French painter, was a youth of fortune, but the solitary pleasure of his youth was his devotion to Raphael; he was at his studies from four in the morning till night.

"Painting or nothing!" was the cry of this enthusiast of elegance; "First fame, then amus.e.m.e.nt," was another. His sensibility was great as his enthusiasm; and he cut in pieces the picture for which David declared he would inevitably obtain the prize. "I have had my reward in your approbation; but next year I shall feel more certain of deserving it," was the reply of this young enthusiast. Afterwards he astonished Paris with his "Marius;" but while engaged on a subject which he could never quit, the principle of life itself was drying up in his veins. HENRY HEADLEY and KIRKE WHITE were the early victims of the enthusiasm of study, and are mourned by the few who are organized like themselves.

'Twas thine own genius gave the final blow, And help'd to plant the wound that laid thee low; So the struck eagle, stretch'd upon the plain, No more through rolling clouds to soar again, View'd his own feather on the fatal dart, And wing'd the shaft that quiver'd in his heart; Keen were his pangs, but keener far to feel He nursed the pinion which impell'd the steel, While the same plumage that had warm'd his nest, Drank the last life-drop of his bleeding breast,

One of our former great students, when reduced in health by excessive study, was entreated to abandon it, and in the scholastic language of the day, not to _perdere substantiam propter accidentia_. With a smile the martyr of study repeated a verse from Juvenal:

Nec propter vitam vivendi perdere causas.

No! not for life lose that for which I live!

Thus the shadow of death falls among those who are existing with more than life about them. Yet "there is no celebrity for the artist," said GESNER, "if the love of his own art do not become a vehement pa.s.sion; if the hours he employs to cultivate it be not for him the most delicious ones of his life; if study become not his true existence and his first happiness; if the society of his brothers in art be not that which most pleases him; if even in the night-time the ideas of his art do not occupy his vigils or his dreams; if in the morning he fly not to his work, impatient to recommence what he left unfinished. These are the marks of him who labours for true glory and posterity; but if he seek only to please the taste of his age, his works will not kindle the desires nor touch the hearts of those who love the arts and the artists."

Unaccompanied by enthusiasm, genius will produce nothing but uninteresting works of art; not a work of art resembling the dove of Archytas, which beautiful piece of mechanism, while other artists beheld flying, no one could frame such another dove to meet it in the air. Enthusiasm is that secret and harmonious spirit which hovers over the production of genius, throwing the reader of a book, or the spectator of a statue, into the very ideal presence whence these works have really originated. A great work always leaves us in a state of musing.

CHAPTER XIII.

Of the jealousy of Genius.--Jealousy often proportioned to the degree of genius.--A perpetual fever among Authors and Artists.--Instances of its incredible excess among brothers and benefactors.--Of a peculiar species, where the fever consumes the sufferer, without its malignancy.

Jealousy, long supposed to be the offspring of little minds, is not, however, confined to them. In the literary republic, the pa.s.sion fiercely rages among the senators as well as among the people. In that curious self-description which LINNaeUS comprised in a single page, written with the precision of a naturalist, that great man discovered that his const.i.tution was liable to be afflicted with jealousy. Literary jealousy seems often proportioned to the degree of genius, and the shadowy and equivocal claims of literary honour is the real cause of this terrible fear; for in cases where the object is more palpable and definite than intellectual excellence, jealousy does not appear so strongly to affect the claimant for admiration. The most beautiful woman, in the season of beauty, is more haughty than jealous; she rarely encounters a rival; and while her claims exist, who can contend with a fine feature or a dissolving glance? But a man of genius has no other existence than in the opinion of the world; a divided empire would obscure him, and a contested one might prove his annihilation.

The lives of authors and artists exhibit a most painful disease in that jealousy which is the perpetual fever of their existence. Why does PLATO never mention XENOPHON, and why does XENOPHON inveigh against PLATO, studiously collecting every little rumour which may detract from his fame?

They wrote on the same subject! The studied affectation of ARISTOTLE to differ from the doctrines of his master PLATO while he was following them, led him into ambiguities and contradictions which have been remarked. The two fathers of our poetry, CHAUCER and GOWER, suffered their friends.h.i.+p to be interrupted towards the close of their lives. Chaucer bitterly reflects on his friend for the indelicacy of some of his tales: "Of all such _cursed stories_ I say fy!" and GOWER, evidently in return, erased those verses in praise of his friend which he had inserted in the first copy of his "Confessio Amantis." Why did CORNEILLE, tottering to the grave, when RACINE consulted him on his first tragedy, advise the author never to write another? Why does VOLTAIRE continually detract from the sublimity of Corneille, the sweetness of Racine, and the fire of Crebillon? Why did DRYDEN never speak of OTWAY with kindness but when in his grave, then acknowledging that Otway excelled him in the pathetic? Why did LEIBNITZ speak slightingly of LOCKE's Essay, and meditate on nothing less than the complete overthrow of NEWTON'S system? Why, when Boccaccio sent to PETRARCH a copy of DANTE, declaring that the work was like a first light which had illuminated his mind, did Petrarch boldly observe that he had not been anxious to inquire after it, for intending himself to compose in the vernacular idiom, he had no wish to be considered as a plagiary? and he only allows Dante's superiority from having written in the vulgar idiom, which he did not consider an enviable merit. Thus frigidly Petrarch could behold the solitary aetna before him, in the "Inferno," while he shrunk into himself with the painful consciousness of the existence of another poet, obscuring his own majesty. It is curious to observe Lord SHAFTESBURY treating with the most acrimonious contempt the great writers of his own times--Cowley, Dryden, Addison, and Prior. We cannot imagine that his lords.h.i.+p was so entirely dest.i.tute of every feeling of wit and genius as would appear by this d.a.m.natory criticism on all the wit and genius of his age. It is not, indeed, difficult to comprehend a different motive for this extravagant censure in the jealousy which even a great writer often experiences when he comes in contact with his living rivals, and hardily, if not impudently, practises those arts of critical detraction to raise a moment's delusion, which can gratify no one but himself.

The moral sense has often been found too weak to temper the malignancy of literary jealousy, and has impelled some men of genius to an incredible excess. A memorable example offers in the history of the two brothers, Dr.

WILLIAM and JOHN HUNTER, both great characters fitted to be rivals; but Nature, it was imagined, in the tenderness of blood, had placed a bar to rivalry. John, without any determined pursuit in his youth, was received by his brother at the height of his celebrity; the doctor initiated him into his school; they performed their experiments together; and William Hunter was the first to announce to the world the great genius of his brother. After this close connexion in all their studies and discoveries, Dr. William Hunter published his magnificent work--the proud favourite of his heart, the a.s.sertor of his fame. Was it credible that the genius of the celebrated anatomist, which had been nursed under the wing of his brother, should turn on that wing to clip it? John Hunter put in his claim to the chief discovery; it was answered by his brother. The Royal Society, to whom they appealed, concealed the doc.u.ments of this unnatural feud. The blow was felt, and the jealousy of literary honour for ever separated the brothers--the brothers of genius.

Such, too, was the jealousy which separated AGOSTINO and ANNIBAL CARRACCI, whom their cousin LUDOVICO for so many years had attempted to unite, and who, during the time their academy existed, worked together, combining their separate powers.[A] The learning and the philosophy of Agostino a.s.sisted the invention of the master genius, Annibal; but Annibal was jealous of the more literary and poetical character of Agostino, and, by his sarcastic humour, frequently mortified his learned brother. Alike great artists, when once employed on the same work, Agostino was thought to have excelled his brother. Annibal, sullen and scornful, immediately broke with him; and their patron, Cardinal Farnese, was compelled to separate the brothers. Their fate is striking: Agostino, divided from his brother Annibal, sunk into dejection and melancholy, and perished by a premature death, while Annibal closed his days not long after in a state of distraction. The brothers of Nature and Art could not live together, and could not live separate.

[Footnote A: See an article on the Carracci in "Curiosities of Literature." vol. ii.]

The history of artists abounds with instances of jealousy, perhaps more than that of any other cla.s.s of men of genius. HUDSON, the master of REYNOLDS, could not endure the sight of his rising pupil, and would not suffer him to conclude the term of his apprentices.h.i.+p; while even the mild and elegant Reynolds himself became so jealous of WILSON, that he took every opportunity of depreciating his singular excellence. Stung by the madness of jealousy, BARRY one day addressing Sir Joshua on his lectures, burst out, "Such poor flimsy stuff as your discourses!" clenching his fist in the agony of the convulsion. After the death of the great artist, BARRY bestowed on him the most ardent eulogium, and deeply grieved over the past. But the race of genius born too "near the sun" have found their increased sensibility flame into crimes of a deeper dye--crimes attesting the treachery and the violence of the professors of an art which, it appears, in softening the souls of others, does not necessarily mollify those of the artists themselves. The dreadful story of ANDREA DEL CASTAGNO seems not doubtful. Having been taught the discovery of painting in oil by Domenico Venetiano, yet, still envious of the merit of the generous friend who had confided that great secret to him, Andrea with his own hand secretly a.s.sa.s.sinated him, that he might remain without a rival. The horror of his crime only appeared in his confession on his death-bed.

DOMENICHINO seems to have been poisoned for the preference he obtained over the Neapolitan artists, which raised them to a man against him, and reduced him to the necessity of preparing his food With his own hand. On his last return to Naples, Pa.s.seri says, "_Non fu mai piu veduto da buon occhio da quelli Napoletani: e li Pittori lo detestavano perche egli era ritornato--mori con qualche sospetto di veleno, e questo non e inverisimile perche l'interesso e un perfido tiranno_." So that the Neapolitans honoured Genius at Naples by poison, which they might have forgotten had it flourished at Rome. The famous cartoon of the battle of Pisa, a work of Michael Angelo, which he produced in a glorious compet.i.tion with the Homer of painting, Leonardo da Vinci, and in which he had struck out the idea of a new style, is only known by a print which has preserved the wonderful composition; for the original, it is said, was cut into pieces by the mad jealousy of BACCIO BANDINELLI, whose whole life was made miserable by his consciousness of a superior rival.

In the jealousy of genius, however, there is a peculiar case where the fever silently consumes the sufferer, without possessing the malignant character of the disease. Even the gentlest temper declines under its slow wastings, and this infection may happen among dear friends, whenever a man of genius loses that self-opinion which animates his solitary labours and const.i.tutes his happiness. Perhaps when at the height of his cla.s.s, he suddenly views himself eclipsed by another genius--and that genius his friend! This is the jealousy, not of hatred, but of despair. Churchill observed the feeling, but probably included in it a greater degree of malignancy than I would now describe.

Envy which turns pale, And sickens even if a friend prevail.

SWIFT, in that curious poem on his own death, said of POPE that

--He can in one couplet fix More sense than I can do in six.

The Dean, perhaps, is not quite serious, but probably is in the next lines--

It gives me such a jealous fit, I cry "Pox take him and his wit."

If the reader pursue this hint throughout the poem, these compliments to his friends, always at his own expense, exhibit a singular mixture of the sensibility and the frankness of true genius, which Swift himself has honestly confessed.

What poet would not grieve to see His brother write as well as he?[A]

ADDISON experienced this painful and mixed emotion in his intercourse with POPE, to whose rising celebrity he soon became too jealously alive.[B] It was more tenderly, but not less keenly, felt by the Spanish artist CASTILLO, a man distinguished by every amiable disposition. He was the great painter of Seville; but when some of his nephew MURILLO'S paintings were shown to him, he stood in meek astonishmont before them, and turning away, he exclaimed with a sigh--"_Ya murio Castillo_!"

Castillo is no more! Returning home, the stricken genius relinquished his pencil, and pined away, in hopelessness. The same occurrence happened to PIETRO PERUGINO, the master of Raphael, whose general character as a painter was so entirely eclipsed by his far-renowned scholar; yet, while his real excellences in the ease of his att.i.tudes and the mild grace of his female countenances have been pa.s.sed over, it is probable that Raphael himself might have caught from them his first feelings of ideal beauty.

[Footnote A: The plain motive of all these dislikes is still more amusing, as given in this couplet of the same poem:--

"If with such genius heaven has blest 'em, Have I not reason to detest 'em."--ED.]

[Footnote B: See article on Pope and Addison in "Quarrels of Authors." ]

CHAPTER XIV.