[Footnote A:  I shall preserve a manuscript note of Lord BYRON on this passage; not without a hope that we shall never receive from him the genius of Italian poetry, otherwise than in the language of his “father land”; an expressive term, which I adopted from the Dutch language some years past, and which I have seen since sanctioned by the pens of Lord Byron and of Mr. Southey.

His lordship has here observed, “It is not my fault that I am obliged to write in English.  If I understood my present language equally well, I would write in it; but this will require ten years at least to form a style:  no tongue so easy to acquire a little of, or so difficult to master thoroughly, as Italian.”  On the same page I find the following note:  “What was rumoured of me in that language?  If true, I was unfit for England:  if false, England was unfit for me:—­’There is a world elsewhere.’  I have never regretted for a moment that country, but often that I ever returned to it at all.”]

Such, then, is that state of irritability in which men of genius participate, whether they be inventors, men of learning, fine writers, or artists.  It is a state not friendly to equality of temper.  In the various humours incidental to it, when they are often deeply affected, the cause escapes all perception of sympathy.  The intellectual malady eludes even the tenderness of friendship.  At those moments, the lightest injury to the feelings, which at another time would make no impression, may produce a perturbed state of feeling in the warm temper, or the corroding chagrin of a self-wounded spirit.  These are moments which claim the encouragements of a friendship animated by a high esteem for the intellectual excellence of the man of genius; not the general intercourse of society; not the insensibility of the dull, nor the levity of the volatile.

Men of genius are often reverenced only where they are known by their writings—­intellectual beings in the romance of life; in its history, they are men!  ERASMUS compared them to the great figures in tapestry-work, which lose their effect when not seen at a distance.  Their foibles and their infirmities are obvious to their associates, often only capable of discerning these qualities.  The defects of great men are the consolation of the dunces.

CHAPTER VIII.

The spirit of literature and the spirit of society.—­The Inventors.  —­Society offers seduction and not reward to men of genius.—­The notions of persons of fashion of men of genius.—­The habitudes of the man of genius distinct from those of the man of society.—­Study, meditation, and enthusiasm, the progress of genius.—­The disagreement between the men of the world and the literary character.