, 1888-01-05
GREAT AUTHORS.
The Age at Which Many or Their
Best Works Have Been
Published.


\ list of the mn and women of genius who
have died at OF about the early age of 81
uui secured for themselves an undis-
putgI plac, in the ranks Of the immortals,
would occGpy not the least brilliant portion
Of the record Of the illustrious dead 1t IS
astonishing how many men, whose names are
household pus,,'ssiOn III 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 rs the smaller lights Of Literature,
if they hal been carried oil 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 aud a thousand Others did after
the same age, and how little they had done
before 1t, we cannot estimate how much
richer the world might have been had those
bright iIte.i.C,s which We're cut of 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 all know,
and what literary history has stigmatized, as
ByTonisnI; but 1t is impossible to forecast
what would have been the result rs to pre-
diet from Nv erthcr'' the development that
ended in Faust" Who can foresee what
Shelley would have done, III the full ripeneSs
of hissplendid power, during another quarter
of century, and if he had died, say, at the
age ot SHAKE spcare! Burns, too, We know,
dreamed of great works, anl when he died
there We're literary movements i'll the air
which might have turned lis labors and his
life into new channel
Miss Austen and Charlotte Bronte were
rather more than 81 when they died, but they
died at an age at which George Eliot had not
written a single novel. One or two transla-
tions, an essay or two i'll The Westminster
Review, and the Scenes of Clerical Life"
were all that had come from the hand of the
subsequent author of Adam Bede" and
"Dauiel Deronda." But Civ IN a fatal chill or
a fever at 81, and the long series Of works
with which George Eliot has enriched
English literature would lave had no exist
ence; III other words. there would have beel
no George Eliot.
a consideration Of this kind should entirely
modify our comparative estimate and cTiti-
cism os distinguished men. Nothing is COM
moneT, for example, among Germans, and
among cultivated Englishmen as well, than
to ascribe to Goethe u genius far transcending
Schiller's The comparison is made between
the whole body of GGthe's literary work. ex
tending over upwards of eighty years of ex-
ceptional healthy activity. and the product Of
poor Schiller's mrtilated existence stretching
to scarcely more than one-half that term, with
a large portion OF it belonging to the period
of childhood and youth. But, had Gcsthe
died at the same age as Schiller, ne 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 genuine poetry expressing the
simple feelings of the heart and an appre-
he.ision or the beauty of nature, he would
have stood at an immeasurable distance be-
hind even the unlettered Burns