bias to dreamy contemplation and solitude. In respect of methodic learning, a good number, if not the majority, appear to have been sadly wanting.
Poets rank high, too, in the matter of early production. After going through a series of sixty names, I find that thirty-eight, or very nearly two thirds, wrote before twenty. Of the others, seventeen began to write before thirty. Thus only five, that is to say, one out of every twelve, took to poetic composition after thirty.
The plant of poetic genius is not only early in disclosing its young shoot, but grows rapidly to the stature that commands admiration and renown. In some cases, as those of Tasso, Goethe, Coleridge, Campbell, and Moore, recognition follows almost instantaneously. In a much larger number, including Milton, Pope, Byron, Keats, and Voltaire, fame is reached after a very few years.
After examining forty-nine cases, I find that twenty-eight, or four out of seven, won renown by the age of twenty-five. The proportion of those who were famous by thirty is thirty-six, or more than five out of seven. Finally, forty-five, or nearly thirteen out of fourteen, had attained fame before forty, leaving only four who attained this point later in life.
Turning now to our list of exceptions, it is to be observed that in some cases—e. g., Chaucer, Marlowe, and Corneille—the record of early life is too meager to allow of our being sure that there were no manifestations of precocity.[1] One of our exceptions, indeed—Dante—appears to have shared with Byron a precocious development of the sexual emotion. But, allowing for uncertainties, there is a clear residue of cases in which the gift of poetic utterance revealed itself late. Camoëns, Racine, Goldsmith, Cowper, Wordsworth, may be cited as examples. The last two poets, together with Dryden and Dante, make up the four who missed renown till after forty. Of these, Cowper appears not to have begun to write till after that age. Dante, like Milton, passed his early manhood in the service of the state. Dryden and Wordsworth began to write when young, and so are signal examples of a long, unrewarded fidelity to the Muse.[2]
Novelists.—Among writers of fiction we find a number who displayed imaginative power in early life. Scott, who was at the University of Edinburgh at twelve, neglecting the regular academic studies for romances, began about this date to practice the invention of stories with a college friend. Dickens is a more impressive instance still. Forced, when a child of nine, to go out into the world and earn his livelihood, he indulged his irresistible bent to fiction not only by a
- ↑ Much the same remark applies to Shakespeare, whose first poetic effort I have set down as dating from his twenty-eighth year.
- ↑ The Greek and Latin poets supply several alleged instances of precocity. Living poets seem, as far as I can judge from the date of their first publication, to be somewhat below the average in this respect.
