The daily dispatch. [volume] (Richmond [Va.]) 1850-1884, 1883-05-12


Gcntus and short Lives.
Errom the London Evening Standard
A list OF the men and women OF genius
who have died at or about the early age OF
thrty-seyen, and secured for themselves an
undisputed place in the ranks Of the inn
mortals, would occupy not the least bril-
liant portion OF the record OF the Illus
trious dead. 1t Is astonishing how many
men whose names are household posses
sion In every civilized country have done
all their best work after thirty-seyen,
and who would never have been heard
Of, OF Mt best would have shown
only "a the smaller lights OF literature,
II they had been carried OIL Mt tue age oil
which Byron, Shelley, Burns, and Raphael
closed their careers. And when we come
to look at what Milton did after thirty
seven, what Goethe and thousand others
did after the same age, and how little they
had done before Ii, 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 20 the world. IL Is certain that
thirty OF forty more years would have
cooled the blood Of Byron and car
ried him out OF what we all know, and what
literary history has stigmatized, as By
ronism; but it is as impossible to forecast
what would have been the result as to pre-
dict from Werther the development that
ended in " Faust" Who can foresee what
Shelley would have done, in the full ripe
ness Of his splendid power, during another
quarter OF century. and il he bad died,
say ut the age Of Shakespeare? Burns, too,
we know, dreamed OF great works, and
when he died there were literary move
ments in the air which might have turned
his abors and his life into new channel.
And was Raphaels genius exhausted when
the grave closed over him at thirty-seven?
No more than Michael Angeles would have
been, and some of the sublimest work OF the
great Tuscan was done i'm the late evening
Of his life.
A consideration OF this kind should en-
tirely modify our comparative estimate and
criticism OF distinguished men. Nothing
Is commoner, for example, among Germans,
aud among cultivated Englishmcn as well,
than to ascribe TO Goethe a genius far
transcending Schiller's. The comparison
is made between the whole body OF Goethe's
literary work, extending over upward OF
eighty years OF exceptional healthy activity.
and the product OF poor Schlller's mutilated
existence stretching to scarcely more than
one half that term, with large portion Of
il belonging to the period Of childhood and
youth. But, had Goethe died at the same
age as Schiller, he would have had poorer
result TO show than Schiller has. He would
have had q great deal less than Byron in
pure poetical work, incomparablv less also
than Shelley, and, in respect OF genuine
poetry expressing the simple feelings OF
the heart and the apprehension Of the
beauty Of nature, he would have stood at
an unreasonable distance behind even the
Burns. There is no doubt that
Schiller, when he died, at forty-siX, had
reached q loftier height of dramatic art
than Goethe had at the same age-we
might say than Goethe had reached at
Schiller had left behind him a
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 two
dramas OF any pretensions. As for Byron,
there is nothing that Goethe did up to
thirty-six (Byron's age at his death) that
will bare comparison with the marvellous
philosophic insight OF Manfred -; no.
thing to equal the astonishing satirical
power of the English Bards and Scotch
Reviewers (and Goethe frequently did try
his hand at satire); nor is there anything
that deserves even to be named in the same
breath as "Don Juan"
Miss Austen and Charlotte Bronte were
rather more than thirty-seven when they
died, but they died at an age at which
George Eliot had not written a single
novel. Ore or two TRANSACTIONS, an essay
or two in the Westminster ReUielo, and the
"Scenes Of Clerical Life" were all that
had come from the hand of the subsequent
author of "Adam Bede" and "Daniel
Deronda." Carlyle moralizes on what
might have been the consequences to
English history il stray bullet had
struck Down Oliver Cromwell. Per-
haps they would not have been so
great rs he imagined, and might have
proved to be nothing more than an earlier
restoration. But given fatal chill or
fever Mt thirty-seyen, and the long series OF
works with which George Eliot has en-
riched English literature would have had
no existence; in other words, there would
have been no George Eliot. Miss Austen's
observant 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 man.
ners it has thus lost. We might in
stance Keats also, and Kirk White and
Chatterton, but one died in his boyhood,
and the Others before them were much
more than boys, and broken column Is
the fittest and most suggestive memorial
over their graves. The mysterious - might
haye-been in the cases OF Keats and Chat
terton, If they had lived till q ripe man.
hoot, would have given TO English litera-
turc many noble poem it does not now
possess. For il has seldom happened that
! a poet or novelist has exhausted himself
in single work. Philip James Bay
ley did so IN "Festus." and Alex.
ander Smith and Sidney Dobel NAV
he said to have thoroughly drained their
lntelects in one or two efforts. No
length OF life would have enabled any OF
them to add greatly to their fame, though
they might have lived on tanning the en-
beers OF their early reputation. Sponta-
ncity. energy, native force, were wanting
in them more almost than in any English
poet above medIocrity. SO likewise Pol
loch, attempting to follow in the footsteps
oil Milton, had probably attained the high.
est pinnacle OF his possibilities in "The
Course OF Time." when his shattered con-
stitutl0n gave WAY and he sank In his 90 rl,,