Morris tribune. [volume] (Morris, Minn.) 1880-2000, 1883-06-09
SHORT-IIVED GENIUS.
An Astonishing Statement-Ta1ente
Men and Women Who Have Died

Men and Women Who Have Died
Young.
A list of the men and women of geni-
age of thirty-seven, and secured for
themselves an undisputed place in the
ranks of the immortals, would occupy
not the least brilliant portion of the rec
ord of the illustrious dead, 1t is aston
ishing how many men whose names are
household possession in every civilized
country have done all their best work
after thrty-seven, and who would never
have been heard of-or, at best, would
have shown only as the smaller lights of
literature-if they had been carried off
at the ale ofwhich Byron, Shelly, Burns
and Raphael closed their careers. And
when we come to look at what Milton
did after thirty seven, what Goethe and
a thousand others did after the same
age, and how little they had done before
it, we cannot estimate how much richer
the world might have been had those
bright intellects 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 years would have cooled
the blood of Byron and carried him
out of what we all know, and what lit
erary history has stigmatized, as By
ronism; but it is as impossible to fore
cast what would have been the result as
to predict from Werther the develop
ment that ended in Faust. Who can
folesee what Shelly would have done,
in the full ripeness of his splendid pow
err, during another quarter of century
and if he had died, say, at the age of
Shakespeare? Burns, too, we know,
dreamed of great works, and vixen he
died there were literary movements in
the air which might have turned his
And was RaphaePs genius exhausted
when the grave closed over him at
tbirty-seven? No more than Michael
Angeles would have been, and some of
the sublimest work of the great Tuscan
was done in the late evening of his
life.
A consideration OF this kind should
entirely modify our comparative es-
innate and criticism of distinguished
men. Nothing is commoner, for ex-
ample, among Germans, and among Gull
tivated Englishmen as well, than to
ascribe to Goethe's literary work, ex-
tending over upward of eighty years OF
exceptional healthy activity, and the
product of poor Schiller's mutilated ex-
istence, stretching to scarcely more
than one half that term, with large
portion of it belonging to the period OF
childhood and youth. But, had Goethe
died at the same age as Schiller, he
would have had a poorer result to show
than Schiller has. He would have
had a great deal less than Byron
in pure poetical work, incomparably less
also than Shelley, and in respect of gen.
uiue poetry, expressing the simple feel
ings of the heart, and an apprehension
of the beauty of nature, he would have
stood at an Unreasonable distance be-
hind even the unlettered Burns. There
is no doubt, that Schiller, when he died
at forty-six, had reached loftier height
of dramatic art than Goethe had at the
same age-we might say than Goethe
had reached at eighty-four. Shiller had
left behind him long roll of immortal
dramas, some of them lit up with the
radiance of fine poetry, and many OF
which will keep the stage as long as the
stage exists; but at the same age, Goethe
had only produced one or f1a dramas