Catoctin clarion. [volume] (Mechanicstown, Md.) 1871-1940, 1884-02-21
GREAT AUTHORS.
The Age at Which Many OF Their
Best Works Have Been
Published.
IIondoB Standard.1

llLOnQOR SCunQ8ru.I
list of tho men and women Of genius who
have died at or about the early age Of 81
and secured for themselves an undis-
puted place in the ranks Of the immortals,
would occupy not the least brilliant portion
of the record of the illustrious dead. 1t is
astonishing how many men, whose names are
q household possession in every civilized
country, have done all their best work
after 81. and who would never have
been heard of, or at the best would have
shown only as the smaller lights of literature,
II they had been carried or at the age OF
which Byron, Shelley, Burns and Raphael
closed their careers And when we come to
look at what Milton did after 81, 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 more
years would have cooled the blood Of Byron,
and carried him out Of what We all know,
and what literary history has stigmatized, as
Byronism; but it is as impossible to forecast
what would have been the result as to pre-
dict from "W erther" the development that
ended in "Faust." Who can foresee what
Shelley would have done in the full ripeneSs
Of hissplendid power, during another quarter
Of century, and if he had died, say, at the
age of Shakespearei Burns. too, we know,
dreamed Of great works, and when he died
there were literary movements in the air
which might have turned his labors and his
life into a new channel.
Miss Austen and Charlotte Bronte were
rather more than 81 whom they died, but they
died at an age at which George Eliot had not
written single novel. One or two transla-
tions an essay or two in The Westminster
Review, and the "Scenes Of Clerical Life"
were all that had come from the hand Of the
subsequent author of adam Bcde" and
"Daniel Deronda" But given fatal chill or
fever at 81, and tho long series Of works
with which George Eliot has enriched
English literature would have bad no exist
ence; in other words, there would have been
no George Eliot.
A consideration of this kind should entirely
modify our comparative estimate and ciiti-
cism of distinguished men. Nothing is conf
moner, Tor example, amorS Germans and
among cultivated Euglishmen as well, than
to ascribe to Goethe a genius far transcending
Schiller's The comparison is mado between
the whole body Of G9shes literary work, ex
tending over upwards of eighty years OF ex-
ceptional healthy activity. an the product OF
poor Schiller's mrtileted existence stretching
to scarcely more than one half that term, with
q large portion OF 1t belonging to the period
of childhood and youth. But, had Goethe
died at the same age as Schiller, he would
have had q poorer result TO show than
Schiller has He would have had great
deal less than Byron in pure poetical work,
incomparably less also than Shelley, and, in
respect Of genuine poetry expressing the
simple feelings Of the heart and an appre-
hension Of the beauty Of nature. be would
have stood at an Unreasonable ditance be-
hind even the unlettered Burns