IV. THE EARLY MATURITY OF GENIUS. WE design the present article rather as a sketch of literary statistics, a table of instances, to illustrate the general principle we aim to establish, than as anything like a complete survey or accurate digest of the subject which it would require a volume to contain. We consider the fact as having a historical basis, as founded in the history of letters, that true genius comes to maturity much sooner than is generally supposed. In a word, we have merely collected a number of witnesses to confirm the maxim stated by Steele, though in a rather restricted form. It occurs in a paper of the Lover, number twenty-two: "I am apt to think that before thirty, a man's natural and acquired parts are at that strength, with a little experience, to enable him (if he can be enabled) to acquit himself well in any business or conversation he shall be admitted to." The vulgar error is to rate the growth of the individual intellect of the original with the ordinary progress of "the common mind ;" to measure the giant by the common standard of human stature. This is evidently absurd. Yet no error is so common as to attempt to depress cleverness by sneers at the youthful age of the aspirant, like the taunts of Walpole directed against Pitt, and like those of every dull man, of middle age, who has a fixed position (beyond which he is not likely to rise), at those who are evidently fast rising above him. No young man of talent, but has had enemies such as these to encounter; men who seem to take a certain fiendish delight, and cherish a malicious pleasure in seeking to depress everything like genuine enthusiasm and the buoyant ambition of the bright boy or the brilliant young man. This arises half from sheer malice, and as much from pure ignorance of the nature and temperament of genius. When the "climber upward " has gained his place among his peers, then these miserable flatterers cringe and fawn as basely as they formerly maligned and ridiculed him; and would fain crowd out of sight his old friends and staunch adherents. In his green age and budding season the youth of genius craves and requires sympathy. It is with him, especially (and, in a measure, with all men), an intellectual want, as evident as the coarsest necessary elements of existence. No By early maturity of genius we mean no prodigies of childish or boyish talent-such we always distrust, as unhealthy prematureness, generally resulting in a feeble manhood. Wonderful boys are almost always dull men. particular point of time can be fixed, but manly intellects are at their maturity somewhere between twenty-five and thirty, and in good constitutions, this vigor and freshness remain sometimes to a great age. Youth is a heavy charge to lay against any writer, yet one becoming daily of less weight, Surely it is a season which furnishes qualities and feelings not to be expected in later life, and at least to be cherished for that reason. To the contemners of youthful genius, we would reply, in the words of the admirable Cowley, himself an example of precocity of talent: "It is a ridiculous folly to laugh at the stars because the moon and the sun shine brighter." Let every captious critic, also, read Bacon's exquisite essay on "Youth and Age," in which he will find the truest justice allotted to each period of this our mortal life. The majority of true poets have, as a general rule, produced their best works at a very early age, comparatively. A very few distinguished instances, on the other side of the question, cannot affect the principles we aim to establish, but rather by especial inference, as they furnish the exceptions, so far they go to establish the general maxim. Youth is naturally the season of enjoyment, and genial enjoyment as naturally gives birth to the sweetest, the most cordial, the delicatest strains of the muse. Yet we do not mean by youth the season of childhood, or boyhood, but the period of mature adolescence, from twenty-four to thirty. Very many fine poets have actually done their best before even this epoch; and all, who have ever become eminent for the exercise of the imaginative faculty, have discovered some signs at least of its existence while in their teens: a very small number of great names being excluded. In a life of the classic English poets, we find but rare examples of late poetical genius; Chaucer, Dryden, Young, Johnson, Cowper, Milton, who composed Paradise Lost, about middle life, yet wrote Comus at the age of twenty-six, when it was first performed as a Masque at Ludlow castle, in Wales. In the drama, where one might justly admit a late development of poetical power, inasmuch as that department of poetry demands more and more cultivated faculties than any other even in comedy, requiring a close observation of manners, and a keen eyesight into characters, we still find the capital writers producing their master-pieces, while other men are hardly fitted by reading and a knowledge of life, even to criticise them. Thus, Shakspeare's first play was printed in his twenty-seventh year: Jonson's Every Man in his Humor, with those admirable portraits of the braggadocio in Bobadil, and of the jealous husband, in Kitely, was written in his twenty-second year. The last play of Farquhar, the Recruiting Officer, appeared a few weeks before his death, which occurred when he was only twenty-seven, and his other delightful comedies were produced some years earlier. Congreve's Old Bachelor was the fruit of his college years, and appeared in his twenty-first year. The masterpiece of English comedy, Love for Love, only two years afterwards. Sheridan's Rivals, inferior only to the School for Scandal, was performed in his twenty-fourth year. The first fruits of Goethe and Schiller's dramatic genius (unlike those of the other writers we have quoted, in not being by any means their best, yet as evincing power and future dramatic skill), Goetz of Berlinchen, and the Robbers, at the respective ages of twenty and twenty-one. Sheridan Knowles, the earliest of living English Dramatists, is the last instance we remember of early dramatic genius. In prose fiction, requiring at least equal knowledge of character and manners, with comedy-we have Roderick Random, perhaps Smollett's best work, at twenty-seven, and the Man of Feeling at twenty-six. Fielding, Sterne and Richardson, were later. But in the present century Hood, Hook, and Dickens, unquestionably wrote their best works earliest. Among the miscellaneous poets, Hall's first, and last, volume of poetry, full of vigor, and mature knowledge of life, was published in his twenty-third year. Warton ad mits that Donne's best poetry was written before the age of twenty-five. Cowley is generally considered precocious: his first volume appeared when he was a boy of thirteen. But his best poetry was the growth of his later years. Pope's Ode to Solitude is often referred to. He was ten years old when he wrote it: a greater miracle was his producing such a body of acute criticism, as his famous Essay on Criticism displays, when he was but twenty-one. Akenside's chief work, the Pleasures of the Imagination, at twenty-three. Collins's noble odes were written at twenty-six. Burns's first volume was first printed when the poet was twenty-eight; under favorable influences, his genius had undoubtedly blossomed much sooner. Classic English poetry in this nineteenth century has been written by young poets, and even the master of them all, still living, wrote his characteristic pieces quite early. Wordsworth's first volume came out at the age of twenty-three; the Pleasures of Hope at twenty-one: the wonderful Ancient Mariner, in which some critics can see nothing, was printed at seventeen; Byron's second canto of Childe Harold, at twenty-four. Of contemporary English poets, we believe all of them without exception produced their finest things at a very early age-Proctor, Moore, Hunt, Tennyson, Miss Barrett, Hood, and a brilliant galaxy of smaller stars. Two, perhaps, in their separate walks, the finest poets of this century (Goethe, Schiller, and Wordsworth excepted), died very early; Shelley at thirty, and Keats at twenty-four. We reserve a page for American Bards, in conclusion, when we come to speak of American Literature, and of this very striking feature in it of the early age at which our finest writers have done their best things, and of an equally |