9]

CHAPTER XVI.

The domestic life of genius.--Defects of great compositions attributed to
domestic infelicities.--The home of the literary character should be the
abode of repose and silence.--Of the Father.--Of the Mother.--Of family
genius.--Men of genius not more respected than other men in their domestic
circle.--The cultivators of science and art do not meet on equal terms
with others, in domestic life.--Their neglect of those around them.--Often
accused of imaginary crimes.

When the temper and the leisure of the literary character are alike
broken, even his best works, the too faithful mirrors of his state of
mind, will participate in its inequalities; and surely the incubations of
genius, in its delicate and shadowy combinations, are not less sensible in
their operation than the composition of sonorous bodies, where, while the
warm metal is settling in the mould, even an unusual vibration of the air
during the moment of fusion will injure the tone.

Some of the conspicuous blemishes of several great compositions may be
attributed to the domestic infelicities of their authors. The desultory
life of CAMOENS is imagined to be perceptible in the deficient connexion
of his epic; and MILTON'S blindness and divided family prevented that
castigating criticism, which otherwise had erased passages which have
escaped from his revising hand. He felt himself in the situation of his
Samson Agonistes, whom he so pathetically describes--

His foes' derision, captive, poor, and blind.

Even LOCKE complains of his "discontinued way of writing," and "writing by
incoherent parcels," from the avocations of a busy and unsettled life,
which undoubtedly produced a deficiency of method in the disposition of
the materials of his great work. The careless rapid lines of DRYDEN
are justly attributed to his distress, and indeed he pleads for his
inequalities from his domestic circumstances. JOHNSON often silently, but
eagerly, corrected the "Ramblers" in their successive editions, of which
so many had been despatched in haste. The learned GREAVES offered some
excuses for his errors in his edition of "Abulfeda," from "his being five
years encumbered with lawsuits, and diverted from his studies." When at
length he returned to them, he expresses his surprise "at the pains he had
formerly undergone," but of which he now felt himself "unwilling, he knew
not how, of again undergoing." GOLDONI, when at the bar, abandoned his
comic