CHAPTER XIII.

Of the jealousy of Genius.—­Jealousy often proportioned to the degree of genius.—­A perpetual fever among Authors and Artists.—­Instances of its incredible excess among brothers and benefactors.—­Of a peculiar species, where the fever consumes the sufferer, without its malignancy.

Jealousy, long supposed to be the offspring of little minds, is not, however, confined to them.  In the literary republic, the passion fiercely rages among the senators as well as among the people.  In that curious self-description which LINNAEUS comprised in a single page, written with the precision of a naturalist, that great man discovered that his constitution was liable to be afflicted with jealousy.  Literary jealousy seems often proportioned to the degree of genius, and the shadowy and equivocal claims of literary honour is the real cause of this terrible fear; for in cases where the object is more palpable and definite than intellectual excellence, jealousy does not appear so strongly to affect the claimant for admiration.  The most beautiful woman, in the season of beauty, is more haughty than jealous; she rarely encounters a rival; and while her claims exist, who can contend with a fine feature or a dissolving glance?  But a man of genius has no other existence than in the opinion of the world; a divided empire would obscure him, and a contested one might prove his annihilation.

The lives of authors and artists exhibit a most painful disease in that jealousy which is the perpetual fever of their existence.  Why does PLATO never mention XENOPHON, and why does XENOPHON inveigh against PLATO, studiously collecting every little rumour which may detract from his fame?  They wrote on the same subject!  The studied affectation of ARISTOTLE to differ from the doctrines of his master PLATO while he was following them, led him into ambiguities and contradictions which have been remarked.  The two fathers of our poetry, CHAUCER and GOWER, suffered their friendship to be interrupted towards the close of their lives.  Chaucer bitterly reflects on his friend for the indelicacy of some of his tales:  “Of all such cursed stories I say fy!” and GOWER, evidently in return, erased those verses in praise of his friend which he had inserted in the first copy of his “Confessio Amantis.”  Why did CORNEILLE, tottering to the grave, when RACINE consulted him on his first tragedy, advise the author never to write another?  Why does VOLTAIRE continually detract from the sublimity of Corneille, the sweetness of Racine, and the fire of Crebillon?  Why did DRYDEN never speak of OTWAY with kindness but when in his grave, then acknowledging that Otway excelled him in the pathetic?  Why did LEIBNITZ speak slightingly of LOCKE’s Essay, and meditate on nothing less than the complete overthrow of NEWTON’S system?  Why, when Boccaccio sent to PETRARCH a copy of DANTE, declaring that the work was like a first light which