tten
too much, while he is mortified at recollecting that he had omitted some
things which he imagines would have secured the object of his wishes.
Madame DE STAEL, who has often entered into feelings familiar to a
literary and political family, in a parallel between ambition and genius,
has distinguished them in this; that while "ambition _perseveres_ in the
desire of acquiring power, genius _flags_ of itself. Genius in the midst
of society is a pain, an internal fever which would require to be treated
as a real disease, if the records of glory did not soften the sufferings
it produces."--"Athenians! what troubles have you not cost me," exclaimed
DEMOSTHENES, "that I may be talked of by you!"

These moments of anxiety often darken the brightest hours of genius.
RACINE had extreme sensibility; the pain inflicted by a severe criticism
outweighed all the applause he received. He seems to have felt, what he
was often reproached with, that his Greeks, his Jews, and his Turks, were
all inmates of Versailles. He had two critics, who, like our Dennis with
Pope and Addison, regularly dogged his pieces as they appeared[A].
Corneille's objections he would attribute to jealousy--at his pieces when
burlesqued at the Italian theatre[B] he would smile outwardly, though sick
at heart; but his son informs us, that a stroke of raillery from his witty
friend Chapelle, whose pleasantry hardly sheathed its bitterness, sunk
more deeply into his heart than the burlesques at the Italian theatre, the
protest of Corneille, and the iteration of the two Dennises. More than
once MOLIERE and Racine, in vexation of spirit, resolved to abandon their
dramatic career; it was BOILEAU who ceaselessly animated their languor:
"Posterity," he cried, "will avenge the injustice of our age!" And
CONGREVE'S comedies met with such moderate success, that it appears the
author was extremely mortified, and on the ill reception of _The Way of
the World_, determined to write no more for the stage. When he told
Voltaire, on the French wit's visit, that Voltaire must consider him as a
private gentleman, and not as an author,--which apparent affectation
called down on Congreve the sarcastic severity of the French author,[C]
--more of mortification and humility might have been in Congreve's
language than of affectation or pride.

[Footnote A: See the article "On the Influence of a bad temper in
Criticism" in "Calamities of Authors," for a notice of Dennis and his
career