Literary Character of Men of Genius: Drawn from Their Own Feelings and ConfessionsDisraeli, Isaac
General
Literary Character of Men of Genius: Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions
Disraeli, Isaac
Authors, English; James I, King of England, 1566-1625; Literature
[Footnote A: Johnson had originally submitted the plan of his
"Dictionary" to Lord Chesterfield, but received no mark of interest or
sympathy during its weary progress; when the moment of publication
approached, his lordship, perhaps in the hope of earning a dedication,
published in _The World_ two letters commending Johnson and his labours.
It was this notice that produced Johnson's celebrated letter, in which he
asks,--"Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man
struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached ground encumbers
him with help? The notice you have been pleased to take of my labours, had
it been early had been kind, but it has been delayed till I am indifferent
and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am
known, and do not want it."--ED.]
"I can make lords of you every day, but I cannot create a Titian," said
the Emperor Charles V. to his courtiers, who had become jealous of the
hours and the half-hours which the monarch stole from them that he might
converse with the man of genius at his work. There is an elevated
intercourse between power and genius; and if they are deficient in
reciprocal esteem, neither are great. The intellectual nobility seems to
have been asserted by De Harlay, a great French statesman; for when the
Academy was once not received with royal honours, he complained to the
French monarch, observing, that when "a man of letters was presented to
Francis I. for the first time, the king always advanced three steps from
the throne to receive him." It is something more than an ingenious
thought, when Fontenelle, in his _eloge_ on LEIBNITZ, alluding to the
death of Queen Anne, adds of her successor, that "The Elector of Hanover
united under his dominion an electorate, the three kingdoms of Great
Britain, and LEIBNITZ and NEWTON."[A]
[Footnote A: This greatness of intellect that glorifies a court, however
small, is well instanced in that at Weimar, where the Duke Frederic
surrounded himself with the first men in Germany. It was the chosen
residence and burial-place of Herder; the birth-place of Kotzebue. Here
also Wieland resided for many years; and in the vaults of the ducal chapel
the ashes of Schiller repose by those of Goethe, who for more than half a
century assisted in the councils, and adorned the court of Weimar.--Ed.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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