| LAMAN BLANCHARD. | 223 |
It was beautiful to see, in a man of first-rate ability like
Blanchard, that almost religious reverence and
admiration for nigh intellectual faculties in other living men, which (there is no denying
it) is a very rare accompaniment of such faculties. It is usually left for ordinary mortals
to pay that homage to living genius which is its only appropriate extrinsic reward, but
which is almost always withheld from it by those at whose hands it is alone acceptable,
until time or death has rendered the tribute of no avail. If, now-a-days, the man of high
genius wants the unqualified and undisparaging admiration of those who approach or equal
him in intellectual endowments, he must die for it. In the mean time, they look with an eye
of preternatural keenness at his errors and deficiencies; and if, from motives
| 224 | LAMAN BLANCHARD. |
Sometimes, indeed (as in the case of Wordsworth), men of high genius, if they duly tutor, direct, and employ their genius, and live long enough, come to see the living world stand to them in the light of a Posterity. But what avails it then? Does anybody suppose that Wordsworth feels anything but contempt for that species of fame which is now accorded to him so profusely by the very same public, and the same organs of it, that poured contempt and ridicule on him and his pretensions for the first half of his literary life?* And Wordsworth is the one exception to the rule that (in England at least) no great poet, or indeed great writer of any kind, was ever duly appreciated during his life-time, and least of all by those who would be best qualified for the office, and would most fitly and willingly perform it, if they were but his posterity instead of his contemporaries.
|
* These Recollections were written before Wordsworth’s death. |
| LAMAN BLANCHARD. | 225 |
Laman Blanchard, so far from yielding to that vulgar superstition, and that still more vulgar jealousy, which will see no exalted intellectual distinction, and no saving virtue, in any but the dead, suffered his ardent, sympathising, and sincere nature to carry him to the other extreme. Where he found high genius in the living, he not only had a tendency to exaggerate it beyond the legitimate bounds which his own fine critical faculty never failed to detect, but he could scarcely be brought to admit that it was disfigured by any faults, or coupled with any deficiencies. In fact, this was one of the many “amiable weaknesses” of his intellectual character—a weakness, however, which clearly had its root in that intense perception and passionate appreciation of intellectual beauty which was one of his chief points of strength.
Blanchard’s literary career commenced at the
period when Byron was in his glory, and Wordsworth was slowly advancing towards his; and his own little volume
was evidently an unconscious and involuntary tribute to his almost idolatrous admiration of
these two
| 226 | LAMAN BLANCHARD. |
But this somewhat exaggerated admiration of Blanchard for intellectual distinction of any kind, was especially
conspicuous where personal friendship or liking quickened his eye to the admirable
qualities of intellectual character, and blinded it to the accompanying defects.
Consequently the sphere of Blanchard’s living hero-worship
extended very wide—wider, I suspect, than that of any other man with similar powers of
intellect
| LAMAN BLANCHARD. | 227 |
I do not believe that Blanchard had paid much attention to Walter Scott—probably from the absorbing nature of his literary occupations at the time that great writer was at the zenith of his fame, and from that vast previous accumulation and rapid subsequent succession of his works which made it impossible for an occupied man to undertake them as a whole. Certain it is that he did not bestow much enthusiasm on that greatest of our modern prose writers.
| 228 | LAMAN BLANCHARD. |
To Carlyle, Blanchard would have nothing to say, except now and then a pleasant because good-natured joke, at the vagaries of that remarkable writer’s remarkable style. And no wonder that such a style was a stumbling-block in the way of one whose own style (especially during the last five or six years of his life) was the perfection of ease and clearness, blended with an elegance and grace that, in him, always contributed to these rather than counteracted them.
Among living poets the only two to whom Blanchard attributed the highest and purest species of poetical power were Wordsworth and Tennyson; though he considered that the author of “Orion” had written separate passages that were at least equal to anything produced by the two poets above-named.
Among the deceased writers of our own day, the only two, with the exception
of Byron, in whose personal character Blanchard felt a strong interest, and for whose powers he
entertained a high admiration, were Charles Lamb and
Hazlitt. Without overlooking the faults of the
latter, Blanchard
| LAMAN BLANCHARD. | 229 |
I believe these two exquisite writers never met more than once or twice,
and then under circumstances not calculated to lead to a personal intimacy. Nor do I
believe that such an intimacy would have been permanently agreeable to either party, if
only from the remarkable resemblances between them that I have referred to; for men who
have little or no egotism, in the ill sense of the phrase, do not like to find themselves
admiring or loving in others qualities which they know and feel themselves to possess: it
seems too much like admiring and loving themselves,
| 230 | LAMAN BLANCHARD. |
If Blanchard’s eloquent
expression of that unbounded and unmingled admiration which he felt for the above-named
writers was calculated to engender the feelings it interpreted, exactly the opposite result
was produced when, as was not seldom the case in his conversation on literary and personal
topics, he found himself hampered between his fine and strong perception of the truth, and
that friendly partiality which prompted him to “see Helen’s beauty in a brow
of Egypt.” The late unfortunate Miss
Landon was one of those friends whom he insisted upon
“monstering” in this way; and in her case there was considerable foundation for
the fantastic superstructure that he delighted to build up. On other occasions, when he was
holding up to admiration, or defending from attack, the intellectual pretensions of some
friend or intimate associate, after abandoning, one by one, every position he took up, and
smilingly admitting that they were not tenable, he would end by a half-unconscious,
| LAMAN BLANCHARD. | 231 |
| ≪ PREV | NEXT ≫ |
