heartbreak rouses an impassive nature to life. "What does
he know," said a sage, "who has not suffered?" When Dumas asked Reboul,
"What made you a poet?" his answer was, "Suffering!" It was the death,
first of his wife, and then of his child, that drove him into solitude
for the indulgence of his grief, and eventually led him to seek and find
relief in verse. [2114] It was also to a domestic affliction that we owe
the beautiful writings of Mrs. Gaskell. "It was as a recreation, in the
highest sense of the word," says a recent writer, speaking from personal
knowledge, "as an escape from the great void of a life from which
a cherished presence had been taken, that she began that series of
exquisite creations which has served to multiply the number of our
acquaintances, and to enlarge even the circle of our friendships." [2115]

Much of the best and most useful work done by men and women has been
done amidst affliction--sometimes as a relief from it, sometimes from a
sense of duty overpowering personal sorrow. "If I had not been so great
an invalid," said Dr. Darwin to a friend, "I should not have done nearly
so much work as I have been able to accomplish." So Dr. Donne, speaking
of his illnesses, once said: "This advantage you and my other friends
have by my frequent fevers is, that I am so much the oftener at the
gates of Heaven; and by the solitude and close imprisonment they reduce
me to, I am so much the oftener at my prayers, in which you and my other
dear friends are not forgotten."

Schiller produced his greatest tragedies in the midst of physical
suffering almost amounting to torture. Handel was never greater than
when, warned by palsy of the approach of death, and struggling with
distress and suffering, he sat down to compose the great works which
have made his name immortal in music. Mozart composed his great operas,
and last of all his 'Requiem,' when oppressed by debt, and struggling
with a fatal disease. Beethoven produced his greatest works amidst
gloomy sorrow, when oppressed by almost total deafness. And poor
Schubert, after his short but brilliant life, laid it down at the early
age of thirty-two; his sole property at his death consisting of his
manuscripts, the clothes he wore, and sixty-three florins in money. Some
of Lamb's finest writings were produced amidst deep sorrow, and Hood's
apparent gaiety often sprang from a suffering heart. As he himself
wrote,

"There's not a string attuned to mir