3. III.
MORALITY AND GENIUS.
We see it gravely stated in a popular
Metropolitan journal that “true genius
goes hand in hand, necessarily, with morality.”
The statement is not a startlingly
novel one. It has been made, probably,
about sixty thousand times before. But it
is untrue and foolish. We wish genius
and morality were affectionate companions,
but it is a fact that they are often bitter
enemies. They don't necessarily coalesce
any more than oil and water do. Innumerable
instances may be readily produced in
support of this proposition. Nobody doubts
that Sheridan had genius, yet he was a sad
dog. Mr. Byron, the author of Childe
Harold “and other poems,” was a man of
genius, we think, yet Mr. Byron was a fearfully
fast man. Edgar A. Poe wrote magnificent
poetry and majestic prose, but he
was in private life hardly the man for small
and select tea parties. We fancy Sir Richard
Steele was a man of genius, but he got
disreputably drunk, and didn't pay his debts.
Swift had genius—an immense lot of it—
yet Swift was a cold-blooded, pitiless, bad
man. The catalogue might be spun out to
any length, but it were useless to do it. We
don't mean to intimate that men of genius
must necessarily be sots and spendthrifts—
we merely speak of the fact that very many
of them have been both, and in some instances
much worse than both. Still we
can't well see (though some think they can)
how the pleasure and instruction people
derive from reading the productions of
these great lights is diminished because
their morals were “lavishly loose.” They
might have written better had their private
lives been purer, but of this nobody can
determine, for the pretty good reason that
nobody knows.
So with actors. We have seen people
stay away from the theater because Mrs.
Grundy said the star of the evening invariably
retired to his couch in a state of
extreme inebriety. If the star is afflicted
with a weakness of this kind, we may regret
it. We may pity or censure the star. But
we must still acknowledge the star's genius,
and applaud it. Hence we conclude that
the chronic weaknesses of actors no more
affect the question of the propriety of patronizing
theatrical representations, than the
profligacy of journeymen shoemakers affects
the question of the propriety of wearing
boots. All of which is respectfully submitted.
