Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1883-11-29
EARLY DEATHS.
Instances of Precocious Genius" Whom
the Gods Love Die Young"
TEro,, t,,a o,,do,, Cton5,rl


From the London Standard
A list of men and women of genius
who have died at or about the early age
of 81, and secured for themselves an
undisputed place i'll the ranks of the
immortals, would occupy not the least
brilliant portion of the record of the il
lustrious dead. 1t is astonishing how
many men, whose names are house
hold possession in every civilized coun-
try, have done all their best work after
81, and who would never have been
heard of, or at hest would have shone
only as the smaller lights of literature,
If they had ben carried OFF at the age
at which Byron, Shelley, Burns and
Raphael closed their careers. And
when we come to look Mt what Milton
did after 81, what Goethe and thou
sand others did after the same age, and
how little they had done before it, we
cannot estimate how much richer the
world m ght have been had those bright
intelects, which were cut off in their
earliest prime, been permitted to give
thirty or forty years of additional work
to the world.
1t is certain that thirty or forty more
years would have cooled the blood Of
BY OF and carrie him out of what we
all know Il WHIST literary history has
stigmat;zed as Byronism; but it is i'm
possible to forecast what would have
been the result as to predict from
"Werth I" the development that ended
in Faust Who can foresee what
Shelly would have done in the full de-
ve.opment of his splendid powers dur
ing another quarter of a century, and if
he had died, say at the age of Shak-
speare? Burns, too, we know, dreamed
of great works, and when he died there
were literary movements in the air
which might have turned his labor and
his life into a new channel. And was
RaphaePs genius exhausted when the
grave closed over him at 81? No more
than Michael Angeles would Lave
been, and some of the sublimest work
of the Tuscan was done in the late
evening of his life.
Miss Austen and Charlotte Bronte
were rather more than 81 when they
died, but they died at an age at which
George Elliott had not written single
novel; Westminster Review" and the
Scenes of Clerical Life" were all that
had come from the hand of the subse-
quent author of adam Bede" and
Daniel Deronda" Carlyle moralizes
on what might have been the conse-
quence to English history if stray
bullet had struck down Oliver Crom-
well. Perhaps they would not be so
great as he imagined, and might have
10 no
earlier restoration. But, give o fatal
chill or fever at 81, and the long series
of works with which George Eliot has
encircled English literature would have
no existence; in other words, there
would have been no George Eliot.
Miss Austen's obseryant eye had not
grown dim nor her facile pen been
robbed of its cunning when her life
terminated and the world knows not
how many more photographs of simple
English character and manners it has
thus lost.
We might instance Keats also, and
| Kirk, White and Chatterton; but one
died in his boyhood and the others be-
fore they were much more than boys,
and broken column is the fittest and
most SugB eStlVe memorial on tnelr
graves. The mysterious might have
been" in the cases of Keats and Chat
terton, if they had lived to ripe man
hood, would have given to English
literature many noble poem it does
not now possess. For it has seldom
happened that poet has exhausted
| himself in single work Phillip Jane.
Ba, ley Id so in "Festus," and Alex.
a. lie smith and Sidney Dobell may be
said to have Thoroughly drained theil
int llecE, in one or two efforts Nc
| Length OF life would have enabled any
of them to add greatly to their fame
though they might have lived on, fan
ming the emhers or their early reputa
ton. Spontanity, energy, native force
Were wanting in them more almost thar
in any English poet above mediocrity
So, likewise, Pollock, attempting to fol
low the footsteps of Milton, had prob
ably attained the highest pinnacle O
his possibilities in "The Course O.
Time, when his shattered constitution
gave way and he sank to his early grave