Maturin Ballou - Genius in Sunshine and Shadow

Protagoras, the Greek sophist and orator, was in his youth a street porter of Athens, carrying loads upon his back like a beast of burden. He was a singularly independent genius, and was expelled from his native city because he openly doubted the existence of the gods. His countryman, Cleanthes the stoic, was also "a hewer of stone and drawer of water," but rose among the Athenians to be esteemed as a rival of the great philosopher Zeno. He wrote many works in his day, – about three hundred years before the Christian Era, – none of which have been preserved except a hymn to Jupiter, which is remarkable for purity of thought and elevation of sentiment.

We need not confine ourselves, however, to so remote a period to illustrate that genius is independent of circumstances. In our random treatment of the subject there occurs to us the name of Bandoccin, one of the most learned men of the sixteenth century, who was the son of an itinerant shoemaker, and who was himself brought up to the trade. Gelli, the prolific Italian author, and president of the Florentine Academy, was a tailor by trade, and of very humble birth. His moral dialogues entitled, I Capricci del Bottajo ("The Whims of the Cooper"), have been pronounced by competent critics to be extraordinary for originality and piquancy, while all his works are remarkable for purity of diction. Canova, the sculptor of world-wide fame, was the son of a day-laborer in the marble quarries. Opie, the distinguished English painter, earned his bread at the carpenter's trade until his majority, but before his death became professor of painting in the Royal Academy. Amyot, the brilliant scholar, and professor of Greek, Hebrew, and Latin, who is ranked among those who have contributed most towards the perfection of the French language, learned to write upon birch-bark with charcoal, while he lived on a loaf of bread per day. This man rose to be grand almoner of France, and proved that courage, perseverance, and genius need no ancestors. 8 8 "What can they see in the longest kingly line in Europe," asks Sir Walter Scott, "save that it runs back to a successful soldier?"

Akenside, the English didactic poet, wit, essayist, and physician, author of the "Pleasures of the Imagination," was a butcher's boy. His developed genius caused him to be appointed to the Queen's household. Sir Humphry Davy was an apothecary's apprentice in his youth. Matthew Prior, the English poet and diplomatist, began life as a charity scholar. Rollin, famous for his "Ancient History," was the son of a poor Parisian cutler, and began life at an iron-forge. James Barry, the eminent historical painter, was in his minority a foremast hand on board an Irish coasting-vessel. D'Alembert, the remarkable French mathematician, author, and academician, was at birth a poor foundling in the streets of Paris, though it must be added that he was the illegitimate and discarded son of Madame de Tencin, one of the wickedest, most profligate, most cynical, and ablest of the high-placed women of France. D'Alembert scorned her 9 9 When approached by Madame de Tencin, who was finally eager to acknowledge so distinguished a son, he replied: — proffered help when she, learning that he was the offspring of one of her desultory amours, attempted to assist him by her money and patronage. He lived austerely poor, and his love was lavished, not on his natural, or rather unnatural, mother, but on the indigent woman who had picked him up in the street, and who by self-denial had enabled him to obtain sustenance and education. As soon as he was old enough to realize his true situation, he said, "I have no name, but with God's help I will make one!" The time came when Catherine II. of Russia offered him one hundred thousand francs per annum to become the educator of her son, which he declined.

Béranger, the lyric poet of France, whose effectiveness and purity of style defy criticism, was at one time a barefooted orphan on the boulevards of the great city. His verses, bold, patriotic, and satirical, were in every mouth among the masses of his countrymen, contributing more than any other cause to produce the revolution of 1830. 10 10 I knew a very wise man that believed if a man were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who should make the laws of a nation. — Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun. He had the noble independence to refuse all official recognition under government. Rachel, it will be remembered, was in her childhood a street-ballad singer. A resident of the French capital once pointed out to the writer a spot on the Champs Élysées where at the age of twelve, so pale as to seem scarcely more than a shadow, she used to appear daily, accompanied by her brother. A rude cloth was spread on the ground, upon which she stood and recited tragic scenes from Corneille and Racine, or sang patriotic songs for pennies, accompanied upon the violin by her brother.

Her attitudes, gestures, and voice always captivated a crowd of people. Rachel was a Jewish pedler's daughter, though she was born in Switzerland; and in these youthful days she wore a Swiss costume upon the boulevards. 11 11 Rachel made her debut at the Théâtre Français of Paris, in 1838. She came to this country in 1855, and performed in our Eastern cities. Three years later she died of consumption, near Cannes, in the South of France. When she was giving one of her readings before the Duke of Wellington, she perceived that all her audience were ignorant of the French language except the Duke himself. She went on, however, at her best, consoling herself that he at least understood her. After it was over, the Duke approached the great actress, and said: "Mademoiselle, our guests have had a great advantage over me; they have had the happiness of hearing you: I am as deaf as a post."

Boccaccio, the most famous of Italian novelists, was the illegitimate son of a Florentine tradesman, and began life as a merchant's clerk. It is well known that Shakespeare borrowed the plot of "All's Well that Ends Well" from Boccaccio. 12 12 Hazlitt, after remarking that Shakespeare's play of "All's Well that Ends Well" is taken from Boccaccio, adds: "The poet has dramatized the original novel with great skill and comic spirit, and has preserved all the beauty of character and sentiment without improving upon it, which is impossible." In the town of Certaldo, Tuscany, the house in which Boccaccio was born is shown to curious travellers. On the façade is an inscription speaking of the small house and a name which filled the world. "Before seven years of age," says Boccaccio, "when as yet I had met with no stories, was without a master, and hardly knew my letters, I had a natural talent for fiction, and produced some small tales." In fact, the "Decamerone" furnished him with plots for several of his plays. Chaucer derived from the same source his poem of the "Knight's Tale." We never hear shallow people reflecting upon the Bard of Avon for taking some of his plots from earlier writers, and weaving about them the golden threads of his superb genius, without recalling Dryden's remark relative to Ben Jonson's adaptations and translations from the classics, in such plays as "Catiline" and "Sejanus." "He invades authors," says Dryden, "like a monarch; and what would be theft in other writers is but victory in him." Sterne's idea upon the same subject also suggests itself. "As monarchs have a right," he says, "to call in the specie of a State and raise its value by their own impression, so are there certain prerogative geniuses who are above plagiaries, who cannot be said to steal, but from their improvement of a thought, rather to borrow it, and repay the commonwealth of letters with interest again, and may more properly be said to adopt than to kidnap a sentiment, by leaving it heir to their own fame."