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
An extraordinary instance of this disagreement between the man of the
world and the literary character, we find in a philosopher seated on a
throne. The celebrated JULIAN stained the imperial purple with an author's
ink; and when he resided among the Antiochians, his unalterable character
shocked that volatile and luxurious race. He slighted the plaudits of
their theatre, he abhorred their dances and their horse-races, he was
abstinent even at a festival, and incorrupt himself, perpetually
admonished the dissipated citizens of their impious abandonment of the
laws of their country. The Antiochians libelled their emperor, and
petulantly lampooned his beard, which the philosopher carelessly wore
neither perfumed nor curled. Julian, scorning to inflict a sharper
punishment, pointed at them his satire of "the Misopogon, or the
Antiochian; the Enemy of the Beard," where, amidst irony and invective,
the literary monarch bestows on himself many exquisite and characteristic
touches. All that the persons of fashion alleged against the literary
character, Julian unreservedly confesses--his undressed beard and
awkwardness, his obstinacy, his unsociable habits, his deficient tastes,
while at the same time he represents his good qualities as so many
extravagances. But, in this Cervantic pleasantry of self-reprehension, the
imperial philosopher has not failed to show this light and corrupt people
that the reason he could not possibly resemble them, existed in the
unhappy circumstance of having been subject to too strict an education
under a family tutor, who had never suffered him to swerve from the one
right way, and who (additional misfortune!) had inspired him with such a
silly reverence for Plato and Socrates, Aristotle and Theophrastus, that
he had been induced to make them his models. "Whatever manners," says the
emperor, "I may have previously contracted, whether gentle or boorish, it
is impossible for me now to alter or unlearn. Habit is said to be a second
nature; to oppose it is irksome, but to counteract _the study of more than
thirty years_ is extremely difficult, especially when it has been imbibed
with so much attention."
And what if men of genius, relinquishing their habits, could do this
violence to their nature, should we not lose the original for a factitious
genius, and spoil one race without improving the other? If nature and
habit, that second nature which prevails even over the first, have created
two beings distinctly different, what mode of existence shall ever
assimilate them? Antipathies and sympathies, those still occult causes,
however concealed, will break forth at an unguarded moment. Clip the wings
of an eagle that he may roost among domestic fowls,--at some unforeseen
moment his pinions will overshadow and terrify his tiny associates, for
"the feathered king" will be still musing on the rock and the cloud.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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