GENIUS AND VANITY. 



213 



GENIUS AND VANITY. 



THE critic who aims at the highest triumph 

 of his art, the revelation to the world of 

 unrecognized genius, must often feel a disagree- 

 able qualm. May he not be puffing a charlatan, 

 instead of heralding the advent of a great man ? 

 The doubt is still more perplexing when the 

 genius to be proclaimed is his own, and the re- 

 sponsibility correspondingly greater. And hence 

 arises a problem which has often occurred to me 

 when reading about two eminent men of the last 

 generation. 



Wordsworth and Haydon were friends. Each 

 sympathized with the aims of the other. Words- 

 worth wished to reform poetry as Haydon wished 

 to reform painting. Each of them endeavored to 

 breathe a loftier spirit into the devotees of his 

 favorite art. Each of them persevered heroically 

 in spite of the most depressing reception. The 

 enthusiasm which animated Haydon was not less 

 elevated above the ends of a commonplace self- 

 ishness than that which animated Wordsworth. 

 If the painter was undeniably vain, the poet 

 pushed vanity to the verge of the sublime. One, 

 however, failed where the other succeeded. Poor 

 Haydon's life long exertions were not, one may 

 hope, entirely thrown away ; but his most 

 cherished ambition came to naught. He pro- 

 duced no work which might entitle the English 

 school to rank among the great schools of the 

 world. Wordsworth, on the contrary, breathed 

 new life even into the rich and vigorous growth 

 of English poetry ; he set his mark upon a gen- 

 eration ; and enjoyed, before he died, the pro- 

 found homage of the best and purest minds of 

 the succeeding generation. 



Haydon, then, made a fatal mistake, whereas 

 Wordsworth's daring was justified by the result. 

 That is clearly a reason for pity in the one case 

 and congratulation in the other. But is it a rea- 

 son — as it is certainly a common pretext — for 

 pronouncing a different moral judgment upon the 

 two men ? Is success to be the sole test of vir- 

 tue in this as in so many other cases ? When a 

 hero burns his ships, scorns the counsels of cool 

 common-sense, plucks the flower safety from the 

 nettle danger, and ends by winning an empire in 

 defiance of all calculation, we are ready with our 

 hosannas. But, if he fails, should we therefore 

 stone him ? If Columbus had met with a little 

 more adverse weather, his courage would not 

 have prevented the failure of his enterprise. 



Had our arctic voyagers chanced upon a better 

 route, they might have reached the pole without 

 expending more devotion. The hero is the man 

 who dares to run a risk ; who is not deterred be- 

 cause an element of the radically unknowable 

 enters into his calculations. If he knew more 

 than others he would be a wiser, but not a better, 

 man than his fellows. He would be playing the 

 great game with loaded dice. His insight, not 

 his daring, would deserve our wonder. But he 

 who risks life and fame upon an uncertainty de- 

 serves equal credit, for his intrinsic merit is the 

 same, whether the cards turn up for him or 

 against him. Our life is little but a wandering 

 in a trackless desert. We throw out exploring- 

 parties in every direction. Ten die of starvation 

 and misery ; one hits upon the right path. Too 

 often we praise the man already rewarded by 

 fortune, and attribute his good luck to some mys- 

 terious power of intuitive judgment. But, if we 

 were just, we should bestow equal praise and 

 more sympathy upon the luckless ones whose 

 steps led them to the barren places, and whose 

 failures, it may be, served as warning beacons to 

 their more favored successors. 



Why not apply this rule to the pioneers of 

 intellectual or artistic progress ? Hundreds of 

 men have wasted lives of energetic endeavor in 

 following delusive paths in that great labyrinth 

 of human knowledge, where the clew is so hard 

 to find, and where at every stage so many paths 

 hold out equal promise. We, enlightened by 

 slow experience, or by wider knowledge, can see 

 that these wanderings were predestined to fail- 

 ure. But why not honor equally the high faith 

 which scorned meaner aims, and was unchilled 

 by the indifference of the vulgar ? Is devotion 

 to knowledge so common a quality that we can 

 afford to despise it unless it bears fruit in appre- 

 ciable results ? We often laugh at the poor 

 would-be philosophers who waste years in trying 

 to discover perpetual motion, or to square the 

 circle. They are, we may be sure, grossly igno- 

 rant, and, in all likelihood, intolerably arrogant. 

 They must be ignorant of other men's work, or 

 blind to the vast improbability that they should 

 be right, and all the great intellects of the world 

 hopelessly wrong. Yet, even in this case, pity as 

 much as scorn may be due to the ignorance ; and 

 the arrogance itself is but the ugly side or the ex- 

 aggerated development of the quality which, more 



