The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1885-04-12
EGOTISM OF GENIUS.

EGOTISM OF GENIUS.
A recent European item of current news
says that 'Victor Hugo went to see the COM
pleted statue of Liberty Enlightening the
World, by M. Bartholdi, and smiled with
qualification when a bystander, seeing the poet
aud the statue facing each other, exclaimed:
Behold! two giants are regarding each other"
TIL great French poets egotism is as well
known as his genius, and is rather bigger and
more omnivorous. But he is not peculiar in
this respect among men of great intellectual
gifts. The first Napoleon was an enormous
egotist. Marlowe vas probably touched by the
same quality, and we know that Ben Jonson
was. Wordsworth's %conceit was so absorbing
that it spoke out often in defiance of time,
place and fitness. Some one at a gentleman's
house, where several guests we're present be-
sides Wordsworth, including some poet of
good repute at that time, remarked that they
were fortunate in having two poets in the COM
pany. 'What other poet is hereg' asked the
'Excursionist." Sir Walter Scott seems
to have been the only man
Of his era absolutely devoid of self-exalta-
ton and envious regard of the fame and good
fortune Of other men. Charles Sumner tells
how he visited Tennyson, and in the course
of their conversation he quoted some lines Of
the Princess" f'That is not the way the
Princess should be recited, demonstrated the
conceited Laureate; 'this is the way" And he
proceeded to recite the whole poem in a
dreary style that spoiled half of it's beauty.
The late Buchanan Read, author of "Sheri-
dan Ride" and several war poems, as we'll as
earlier and more extended works of great
merit, particularly Drifting" a favorite
piece of Evolutionary exercise of James E.
Murdoch, once called on Mr.. Tennyson, so he
informed the writer, and was treated to the
aattering suggestion that america had no
poets and no literature worth anything, and
probably never would have" Mr.. Reads re-
sentiment of this impeachment Of American
genius was met by a hint to compare any
of our p%oetical work with some of his
poems. Mr.. Read himself was no inconspic-
uous illustration of the same quality. He came
to our city several times during the war-once
to paint the portrait of Governor Morton, full
length, for the City Council of Cincinnati, as
a recognition of the Governors services in
helping the city at the time of the 'Kirby
Smith raid'-and usually he slept on a lounge
in the Journal sanctum instead OF going to a
hotel. One night, after the editor had cleared
up all the work required for an hour or so the
couple went to the room of United States
Marshal Garland Rose, where there was quite
a company of grand jurors of the federal
court, then in session, collected for a little
social entertainment. The conversation was
IN war topics. Mr.. Read hadn't been in the
room five minutes till he turned to the editor
and said, ''That remark'--made by some one
of the dozen present-"contains just the sug-
gestion of one stanza of my poem on the Grave
at home! u very me eulOgy on the patlenc
heroism of the women left behind by the
soldiers who entered the army. Of course, he
was asked what it was, and he replied by
reciting the whole poem-well worth the hear
ing certainly, but just as certainly hauled into
that company ''by the head and shoulders" by
the poets egotism. That recitation suggested
another to him, or to Mr.. Rose, who was a
warm admirer, or to the. editor, who was
looked to as the reservoir of convenient sug-
gestions to prolong the performance, and for
an hour and a half that social gathering be-
came an audience of dead heads at a 'read-
ing of Mr.. Reads poetical works, from the
New Pastoral and the "Wagoner Of the
A~lleghanies" to Drifting the Brave at
Home and the Battle of the Monitor and
Merrimac." Nobody else was allowed to get
in a word edgewise, except as one of the
means of prolonging the poets display Of his
own genius. Dickens, a greater genius than
Read, or Wordsworth, OF, for that matter,