Literary Character of Men of Genius | Page 5

only such. Perhaps also I may have been
too fond of the subject, which has been for me an old and a favourite
one--I may have exalted the literary character beyond the scale by
which society is willing to fix it. Yet what is this Society, so
omnipotent, so all judicial? The society of to-day was not the society of
yesterday. Its feelings, its thoughts, its manners, its rights, its wishes,
and its wants, are different and are changed: alike changed or alike
created by those very literary characters whom it rarely comprehends
and often would despise. Let us no longer look upon this retired and
peculiar class as useless members of our busy race. There are mental as
well as material labourers. The first are not less necessary; and as they
are much rarer, so are they more precious. These are they whose
"published labours" have benefited mankind--these are they whose
thoughts can alone rear that beautiful fabric of social life, which it is
the object of all good men to elevate or to support. To discover truth
and to maintain it,--to develope the powers, to regulate the passions, to
ascertain the privileges of man, --such have ever been, and such ever
ought to be, the labours of AUTHORS! Whatever we enjoy of political

and private happiness, our most necessary knowledge as well as our
most refined pleasures, are alike owing to this class of men; and of
these, some for glory, and often from benevolence, have shut
themselves out from the very beings whom they love, and for whom
they labour.
Upwards of forty years have elapsed since, composed in a distant
county, and printed at a provincial press, I published "An Essay on the
Manners and Genius of the Literary Character." To my own habitual
and inherent defects were superadded those of my youth. The crude
production was, however, not ill received, for the edition disappeared,
and the subject was found more interesting than the writer.
During a long interval of twenty years, this little work was often
recalled to my recollection by several, and by some who have since
obtained celebrity. They imagined that their attachment to literary
pursuits had been strengthened even by so weak an effort. An
extraordinary circumstance concurred with these opinions. A copy
accidentally fell into my hands which had formerly belonged to the
great poetical genius of our times; and the singular fact, that it had been
more than once read by him, and twice in two subsequent years at
Athens, in 1810 and 1811, instantly convinced me that the volume
deserved my renewed attention.
It was with these feelings that I was again strongly attracted to a subject
from which, indeed, during the course of a studious life, it had never
been long diverted. The consequence of my labours was the publication,
in 1818, of an octavo volume, under the title of "The Literary Character,
illustrated by the History of Men of Genius, drawn from their own
feelings and confessions."
In the preface to this edition, in mentioning the fact respecting Lord
Byron, which had been the immediate cause of its publication, I added
these words: "I tell this fact assuredly not from any little vanity which it
may appear to betray;--for the truth is, were I not as liberal and as
candid in respect to my own productions, as I hope I am to others, I
could not have been gratified by the present circumstance; for the
marginal notes of the noble author convey no flattery;--but amidst their

pungency, and sometimes their truth, the circumstance that a man of
genius could reperuse this slight effusion at two different periods of his
life, was a sufficient authority, at least for an author, to return it once
more to the anvil."
Some time after the publication of this edition of "The Literary
Character," which was in fact a new work, I was shown, through the
kindness of an English gentleman lately returned from Italy, a copy of
it, which had been given to him by Lord Byron, and which again
contained marginal notes by the noble author. These were peculiarly
interesting, and were chiefly occasioned by observations on his
character, which appeared in the work.
In 1822 I published a new edition of this work, greatly enlarged, and in
two volumes. I took this opportunity of inserting the manuscript Notes
of Lord Byron, with the exception of one, which, however
characteristic of the amiable feelings of the noble poet, and however
gratifying to my own, I had no wish to obtrude on the notice of the
public.[A]
[Footnote A: As everything connected with the reading of a mind like
Lord BYRON'S interesting to the philosophical inquirer, this note may
now be preserved. On that passage of the Preface of the second Edition
which