Read Ebook: Literary Character of Men of Genius Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions by Disraeli Isaac Disraeli Benjamin Earl Of Beaconsfield Editor

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INTRODUCTION 3

Of literary characters, and of the lovers of literature and art. 11

Of the adversaries of literary men among themselves.--Matter-of-fact men, and men of wit.--The political economists.--Of those who abandon their studies.--Men in office.--The arbiters of public opinion.--Those who treat the pursuits of literature with levity. 14

Of artists, in the history of men of literary genius.--Their habits and pursuits analogous.--The nature of their genius is similar in their distinct works.--Shown by their parallel areas, and by a common end pursued by both. 20

Of natural genius.--Minds constitutionally different cannot have an equal aptitude.--Genius not the result of habit and education.-- Originates in peculiar qualities of the mind.--The predisposition of genius.--A substitution for the white paper of Locke. 24

Youth of genius.--Its first impulses may be illustrated by its subsequent actions.--Parents have another association of the man of genius than we.--Of genius, its first habits.--Its melancholy. --Its reveries.--Its love of solitude.--Its disposition to repose. --Of a youth distinguished by his equals.--Feebleness of its first attempts.--Of genius not discoverable even in manhood.--The education of the youth may not be that of his genius.--An unsettled impulse, querulous till it finds its true occupation.--With some, curiosity as intense a faculty as invention.--What the youth first applies to is commonly his delight afterwards.--Facts of the decisive character of genius. 31

The first studies.--The self-educated are marked by stubborn peculiarities.--Their errors.--Their improvement from the neglect or contempt they incur.--The history of self-education in Moses Mendelssohn.--Friends usually prejudicial in the youth of genius. --A remarkable interview between Petrarch in his first studies, and his literary adviser.--Exhortation. 55

Of the irritability of genius.--Genius in society often in a state of suffering.--Equality of temper more prevalent among men of letters.--Of the occupation of making a great name.--Anxieties of the most successful.--Of the inventors.--Writers of learning.-- Writers of taste. --Artists. 69

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. 89

Conversations of men of genius.--Their deficient agreeableness may result from qualities which conduce to their greatness.--Slow-minded men not the dullest.--The conversationists not the ablest writers. --Their true excellence in conversation consists of associations with their pursuits. 99

Literary solitude.--Its necessity.--Its pleasures.--Of visitors by profession.--Its inconveniences. 109

The meditations of Genius.--A work on the Art of Meditation not yet produced.--Predisposing the mind.--Imagination awakens imagination. --Generating feelings by music.--Slight habits.--Darkness and silence, by suspending the exercise of our senses, increase the vivacity of our conceptions.--The arts of memory.--Memory the foundation of genius.--Inventions by several to preserve their own moral and literary character.--And to assist their studies.--The meditations of genius depend on habit.--Of the night-time.--A day of meditation should precede a day of composition.--Works of magnitude from slight conceptions.--Of thoughts never written.--The art of meditation exercised at all hours and places.--Continuity of attention the source of philosophical discoveries. --Stillness of meditation the first state of existence in genius. 116

The enthusiasm of genius.--A state of mind resembling a waking dream distinct from reverie.--The ideal presence distinguished from the real presence.--The senses are really affected in the ideal world, proved by a variety of instances.--Of the rapture or sensation of deep study in art, science, and literature. --Of perturbed feelings, in delirium.--In extreme endurance of attention.--And in visionary illusions.--Enthusiasts in literature and art.--Of their self-immolations. 136

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. 154

Want of mutual esteem among men of genius often originates in a deficiency of analogous ideas.--It is not always envy or jealousy which induces men of genius to undervalue each other. 159

Self-praise of genius.--The love of praise instinctive in the nature of genius.--A high opinion of themselves necessary for their great designs.--The ancients openly claimed their own praise.--And several moderns.--An author knows more of his merits than his readers.--And less of his defects.--Authors versatile in their admiration and their malignity. 162

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. 173

The poverty of literary men.--Poverty, a relative quality.--Of the poverty of literary men in what degree desirable.--Extreme poverty.--Task-work.--Of gratuitous works.--A project to provide against the worst state of poverty among literary men. 186

The matrimonial state of literature.--Matrimony said not to be well-suited to the domestic life of genius.--Celibacy a concealed cause of the early querulousness of men of genius.--Of unhappy unions.--Not absolutely necessary that the wife should be a literary woman.--Of the docility and susceptibility of the higher female character.--A picture of a literary wife. 198

Literary friendships.--In early life.--Different from those of men of the world.--They suffer in unrestrained communication of their ideas, and bear reprimands and exhortations.--Unity of feelings.--A sympathy not of manners but of feelings.--Admit of dissimilar characters.--Their peculiar glory.--Their sorrow. 209

The literary and the personal character.--The personal dispositions of an author may be the reverse of those which appear in his writings.--Erroneous conceptions of the character of distant authors.--Paradoxical appearances in the history of genius.--Why the character of the man may be opposite to that of his writings. 217

The man of letters.--Occupies an intermediate station between authors and readers.--His solitude described.--Often the father of genius.--Atticus, a man of letters of antiquity.--The perfect character of a modern man of letters exhibited in Peiresc.-- Their utility to authors and artists. 226

Literary old age still learning.--Influence of late studies in life.--Occupations in advanced age of the literary character. --Of literary men who have died at their studies. 238

Universality of genius.--Limited notion of genius entertained by the ancients.--Opposite faculties act with diminished force. --Men of genius excel only in a single art. 244

Literature an avenue to glory.--An intellectual nobility not chimerical, but created by public opinion.--Literary honours of various nations.--Local associations with the memory of the man of genius. 248

Influence of authors on society, and of society on authors. --National tastes a source of literary prejudices.--True genius always the organ of its nation.--Master-writers preserve the distinct national character.--Genius the organ of the state of the age.--Causes of its suppression in a people.--Often invented, but neglected.--The natural gradations of genius.--Men of genius produce their usefulness in privacy--The public mind is now the creation of the public writer.--Politicians affect to deny this principle.--Authors stand between the governors and the governed.--A view of the solitary author in his study.--They create an epoch in history.--Influence of popular authors.--The immortality of thought.--The family of genius illustrated by their genealogy. 258

LITERARY MISCELLANIES.

Miscellanists 281

Prefaces 286

Style 291

Goldsmith and Johnson 294

Self-characters 295

On reading 298

On habituating ourselves to an individual pursuit 302

On novelty in literature 305

Vers de Soci?t? 308

The genius of Moli?re 310

The sensibility of Racine 325

Of Sterne 332

Hume, Robertson, and Birch 340

Of voluminous works incomplete by the deaths of the authors 350

Of domestic novelties at first condemned 355

Domesticity; or a dissertation on servants 364

Printed letters in the vernacular idiom 375

CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST.

Advertisement 383

His pedantry 388

His polemical studies 389

--how these were political 392

The Hampton Court conference 393

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