Literary Character of Men of Genius | Page 6

I have already quoted, his Lordship was thus pleased to write:
"I was wrong, but I was young and petulant, and probably wrote down
anything, little thinking that those observations would be betrayed to
the author, whose abilities I have always respected, and whose works in
general I have read oftener than perhaps those of any English author
whatever, except such as treat of Turkey."]
Soon after the publication of this third edition, I received the following
letter from his lordship:--
_"Montenero, Villa Dupuy, near Leghorn, June 10, 1822._
"DEAR SIR,--If you will permit me to call you so,--I had some time
ago taken up my pen at Pisa, to thank you for the present of your new

edition of the 'Literary Character,' which has often been to me a
consolation, and always a pleasure. I was interrupted, however, partly
by business, and partly by vexation of different kinds,--for I have not
very long ago lost a child by fever, and I have had a good deal of petty
trouble with the laws of this lawless country, on account of the
prosecution of a servant for an attack upon a cowardly scoundrel of a
dragoon, who drew his sword upon some unarmed Englishmen, and
whom I had done the honour to mistake for an officer, and to treat like
a gentleman. He turned out to be neither,--like many other with medals,
and in uniform; but he paid for his brutality with a severe and
dangerous wound, inflicted by nobody knows whom, for, of three
suspected, and two arrested, they have been able to identify neither;
which is strange, since he was wounded in the presence of thousands,
in a public street, during a feast-day and full promenade. --But to return
to things more analogous to the 'Literary Character,' I wish to say, that
had I known that the book was to fall into your hands, or that the MS.
notes you have thought worthy of publication would have attracted
your attention, I would have made them more copious, and perhaps not
so careless.
"I really cannot know whether I am, or am not, the genius you are
pleased to call me,--but I am very willing to put up with the mistake, if
it be one. It is a title dearly enough bought by most men, to render it
endurable, even when not quite clearly made out, which it never can be,
till the Posterity, whose decisions are merely dreams to ourselves, have
sanctioned or denied it, while it can touch us no further.
"Mr. Murray is in possession of a MS. memoir of mine (not to be
published till I am in my grave), which, strange as it may seem, I never
read over since it was written, and have no desire to read over again. In
it I have told what, as far as I know, is the _truth_--not the whole
truth--for if I had done so, I must have involved much private, and
some dissipated history: but, nevertheless, nothing but truth, as far as
regard for others permitted it to appear.
"I do not know whether you have seen those MSS.; but, as you are
curious in such things as relate to the human mind, I should feel

gratified if you had. I also sent him (Murray), a few days since, a
Common-place Book, by my friend Lord Clare, containing a few things,
which may perhaps aid his publication in case of his surviving me. If
there are any questions which you would like to ask me, as connected
with your philosophy of the literary mind (if mine be a literary mind), I
will answer them fairly, or give a reason for not, good--bad--or
indifferent. At present, I am paying the penalty of having helped to
spoil the public taste; for, as long as I wrote in the false exaggerated
style of youth and the times in which we live, they applauded me to the
very echo; and within these few years, when I have endeavoured at
better things, and written what I suspect to have the principle of
duration in it: the Church, the Chancellor, and all men, even to my
grand patron, Francis Jeffrey, Esq., of the Edinburgh Review, have
risen up against me, and my later publications. Such is Truth! men dare
not look her in the face, except by degrees; they mistake her for a
Gorgon, instead of knowing her to be Minerva. I do not mean to apply
this mythological simile to my own endeavours, but I have only to turn
over a few pages of your volumes to find innumerable and far more
illustrious instances. It is lucky that I am of a temper not to be easily
turned aside, though by no means difficult to irritate. But I am making
a dissertation, instead