The Arizona champion., 1891-01-24
THE NE'ER-DO-W WELLS,
Men of Genius Who Were al
 First Underrated.
THE STORY OF THE "UGLY puGKLIRa.'
Authors Whose Now Famous Works
 Wers Once Laughed at.

uG OljluiOllS UT ohN LOCiS as to a mans powers are rarely of any value. Sometimes they ridiculously over rate him and push some donkey forward into a conspicuous position where the length of his ears. as defined against the background of the horizon. may be ac- curately and publicly ascertained. But more frequently-and especially In the case of man of real genius @ey are inclined to undervalue one whG1n they have come to regard as one of themselves.
 Montaigne tells us In his Essays" that his attempt to become an author was laughed at in his own presence, and, even after he had won his fame, he found that "at home he was obliged to pur- chase printers, while at distance print CTS purchased him." Balzac's family were sarcasticaly indignant at his presuming to believe that he could write, and visited three failures with the usual exasperat- ing "I told you so." When Swift intro duced Parnell to Lord Bolingbroke and to the world he made this entry in the jour nal: ''lt is pleasant to see one who hardly passes for anything in Ireland make his way here with a little friendly forward ing" Daniel Webster in the very height of his fame, just after his famous Bunker Hill speech, took run down to his native village, which he had not visited in so many years that he was not recognized by his former cronies. Accosting an old friend of the Websters, he gradually, after due discussion of the weather and the crops. turned the conversation upon his own family Thereupon his compan- ion burst out into enthusiastic enccmiums upon the virtues and abilities of Daniels elder brother, Ebenezer, who had died young. and whose early death he fttingly deplored Daniel slipped in 8 modest query as to whether there was not brother named Dan He never was much account, said the old gentleman, with a shake of his head. ''l believe be went to Boston and became some kind of lawyer or mother"
 Andersen has allegorized his own for lorn and unappreciated youth in the story of the Ugly Duckling" which turned out to be swan. This story is a favorite with Bismarck. ''I was an ugly duckling myself" he once told friend; my poor old mother never would believe that there was any good in me-" Isaac Barrow's parents conceived 50 mean an opinion of his temper and parts when he was 8 boy at the Charter House school that his father used to say if 1t pleased God to take away from him any of his children it might be Isaac, the least promising. Adam Clarke's father was equally uncom- plimentary to his own flesh and blood when he proclaimed his son to be "a prievous dunce." Sheridan's mother pre- sented him to 8 new tutor as ''an incor. rigible dunce."
 Poe at West Point was laughing stock to his schoolmates Byron at Harrow was in no wise distinguished above his fellows. Napoleon and Wellington in their school days were distinguished only for dullness. The mother of the latter must be added to our list of complimentary parents. Arthur was good for nothing, she thought, save as food for powder. Robert Gives family were thoroughly disgusted with him by the time he was Is years old. his reputation for stupidity being then only equaled by his reputa. tion for general wickedness, and, gladly accepting an Indian clerkship for him, they shipped him off to Madras, ''to make fortune or die of yellow fever" Gold smith, up to the time of the publication of The Traveller" " was looked upon as an idiot by almost all who knew him. After ward he was dubbed an inspired idiot. Burns was a dull boy, good only at ath- letic exercises. Sir Humphrey Davy was by no means esteemed a bril- liant boy. While he was with me, '" says his teacher, David Gilbert, '1 could not discern the faculties by which he was so much distinguished. And be sure that the good burghers of Stratford. on-Avon saw nothing in Will Shakespeare, the butchers boy, but wild. harum. scarum scatter brain, whose only chances of future elevation lay in the chance open to all rogues on the gallows- Indeed, the Rev Mir. -, who was pastor in the poets birthplace in l64S, says there was another butchers boy in the same town who was deemed more than an equal of Master Shakespeare in parts. This prod.
 Scott tells us in his Diary" that for a time he was underrated by most of his companions, though subsequently, getting forward and held 8 bold and clever fel- low, contrary to the opinion of all who thought him a mere dreamer. "Dunce he is and dunce he will remain" was the sentence passed upon him by Professor | Dalzell at the Edinburgh university. The coldness of his critical friends at the out set of life had almost deterred him from poetical composition, as it afterward caused him to throw aside the unfinished manuscript of "Waverley" to molder away for eight years in his desk. The first sketch of his maiden effort at origi. nal verse, "The Lay of the Last Min strel, he read over oneevening after din ner to lis friends Erskine and Crouneston. They listened with just as much apparent attention as the laws of courtesy abso- lutely demanded, smoked their cigars, passed the claret, hemmed, drew 8 sigh of relief at the end of the first canto, and returned without a word of comment to the thread of conversation which Scott had broken into with his cold dash of po- etry. He interpreted their silence as un- uttered condemnation, and threw the stanzas aside in disgust; nor was It until long after that they again saw the light
 When Heine read his two stanzas. 1.-The Pine and the Palm" to a coterie which numbered such men as Fouque, Schlegel, Chamisso, etc., they all burst into peals of inextinguishabe laughter which well nigh put him out of conceit with 8 poem whose fame is now world wide, Addison advised Pope not to introduce his fairy mythology into 'The Rape of the Lock. ' Wordsworths friends all besought him to leave out of his volume of Lyrical Ballads" the poem We are Seven, as suring him tEat it would bring down upon him the laughter of all Britain. Pope had the pleasure of informing a friend who told him that there was a thing just out called An Essay on Man, n which was most abominable stuff, without coherence or connection, that he had seen the thing" before it went to press, since
 1t was his own writing; upon which the
 astonished critic seized his hat, "blushed, bowed and took his leave forever. Lip
 pincott's Magazine.