Croker, in his edition of _Boswell_, remarks that all the great English
poets had no posterity. He names Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Milton, Otway,
Dryden, Rowe, Addison, Pope, Swift, Gay, Johnson, Goldsmith, Cowper.
Hobbes, Camden, and many others, avoided marriage in order to have more
time to devote to study. Michelangelo said, “I have more than enough of
a wife in my art.” Among celibates may be mentioned also: Kant, Newton,
Pitt, Fox, Fontenelle, Beethoven, Gassendi, Galileo, Descartes, Locke,
Spinoza, Bayle, Leibnitz, Malebranche, Gray, Dalton, Hume, Gibbon,
Macaulay, Lamb, Bentham, Leonardo da Vinci, Copernicus, Reynolds,
Handel, Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer, Schopenhauer, Camoëns, Voltaire,
Chateaubriand, Flaubert, Foscolo, Alfieri, Cavour, Pellico, Mazzini,
Aleardi, Guerrazzi. And among women: Florence Nightingale, Catherine
Stanley, Gaetana Agnesi (the mathematician), and Luigia Laura Bassi. A
very large number of married men of genius have not been happy in
marriage: Shakespeare, Dante, Marzolo, Byron, Coleridge, Addison,
Landor, Carlyle, Ary Scheffer, Rovani, A. Comte, Haydn, Milton, Sterne,
Dickens, &c. St. Paul boasted of his absolute continence; Cavendish
altogether lacked the sexual instinct, and had a morbid antipathy to
women. Flaubert wrote to George Sand: “The muse, however intractable,
gives fewer sorrows than woman. I cannot reconcile one with the other.
One must choose.”[39] Adam Smith said he reserved his gallantry for his
books. Chamfort, the misanthrope, wrote: “If men followed the guidance
of reason no one would marry; for my own part, I will have nothing to do
with it, lest I should have a son like myself.” A French poet has said:
“_Les grands esprits, d’ailleurs très-estimables,_
_Ont très peu de talent pour former leurs semblables._”[40]
_Unlikeness to Parents._--Nearly all men of genius have differed as much
from their fathers as from their mothers (Foscolo, Michelangelo, Giotto,
Haydn, &c.). That is one of the marks of degeneration. For this reason
one notes physical resemblances between men of genius belonging to very
different races and epochs; for example, Julius Cæsar, Napoleon, and
Giovanni of the Black Bands; or Casti, Sterne, and Voltaire. They often
differ from their national type. They differ by the possession of noble
and almost superhuman characters (elevation of the forehead, notable
development of the nose and of the head, great vivacity of the eyes);
while the cretin, the criminal, and often the lunatic, differ by the
possession of ignoble features: Humboldt, Virchow, Bismarck, Helmholtz,
and Holtzendorf, do not show a German physiognomy. Byron was English
neither in his face nor in his character; Manin did not show the
Venetian type; Alfieri and d’Azeglio had neither the Piedmontese
character nor face. Carducci’s face is not Italian. Nevertheless, one
finds very notable and frequent exceptions. Michelangelo, Leonardo da
Vinci, Raphael, and Cellini, presented the Italian type.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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