In the jealousy of genius, however, there is a peculiar case where the fever silently consumes the sufferer, without possessing the malignant character of the disease.  Even the gentlest temper declines under its slow wastings, and this infection may happen among dear friends, whenever a man of genius loses that self-opinion which animates his solitary labours and constitutes his happiness.  Perhaps when at the height of his class, he suddenly views himself eclipsed by another genius—­and that genius his friend!  This is the jealousy, not of hatred, but of despair.  Churchill observed the feeling, but probably included in it a greater degree of malignancy than I would now describe.

                 Envy which turns pale,
  And sickens even if a friend prevail.

SWIFT, in that curious poem on his own death, said of POPE that

—­He can in one couplet fix
More sense than I can do in six.

The Dean, perhaps, is not quite serious, but probably is in the next lines—­

  It gives me such a jealous fit,
  I cry “Pox take him and his wit.”

If the reader pursue this hint throughout the poem, these compliments to his friends, always at his own expense, exhibit a singular mixture of the sensibility and the frankness of true genius, which Swift himself has honestly confessed.

  What poet would not grieve to see
  His brother write as well as he?[A]

ADDISON experienced this painful and mixed emotion in his intercourse with POPE, to whose rising celebrity he soon became too jealously alive.[B] It was more tenderly, but not less keenly, felt by the Spanish artist CASTILLO, a man distinguished by every amiable disposition.  He was the great painter of Seville; but when some of his nephew MURILLO’S paintings were shown to him, he stood in meek astonishmont before them, and turning away, he exclaimed with a sigh—­“Ya murio Castillo!” Castillo is no more!  Returning home, the stricken genius relinquished his pencil, and pined away, in hopelessness.  The same occurrence happened to PIETRO PERUGINO, the master of Raphael, whose general character as a painter was so entirely eclipsed by his far-renowned scholar; yet, while his real excellences in the ease of his attitudes and the mild grace of his female countenances have been passed over, it is probable that Raphael himself might have caught from them his first feelings of ideal beauty.

[Footnote A:  The plain motive of all these dislikes is still more amusing, as given in this couplet of the same poem:—­

  “If with such genius heaven has blest ’em,
  Have I not reason to detest ’em.”—­ED.]

[Footnote B:  See article on Pope and Addison in “Quarrels of Authors.” ]

CHAPTER XIV.

Want of mutual esteem among men of genius often originates in a deficiency of analogous ideas.—­It is not always envy or jealousy which induces men of genius to undervalue each other.