As soon as he
became the friend and secretary of Canalis he did a great amount of
labor for him, but by the end of eighteen months he had learned to
understand the barrenness of a nature that was poetic through literary
expression only. The truth of the old proverb, "The cowl doesn't make
the monk," is eminently shown in literature. It is extremely rare to
find among literary men a nature and a talent that are in perfect
accord. The faculties are not the man himself. This disconnection,
whose phenomena are amazing, proceeds from an unexplored, possibly an
unexplorable mystery. The brain and its products of all kinds (for in
art the hand of man is a continuation of his brain) are a world apart,
which flourishes beneath the cranium in absolute independence of
sentiments, feelings, and all that is called virtue, the virtue of
citizens, fathers, and private life. This, however true, is not
absolutely so; nothing is absolutely true of man. It is certain that a
debauched man will dissipate his talent, that a drunkard will waste it
in libations; while, on the other hand, no man can give himself talent
by wholesome living: nevertheless, it is all but proved that Virgil,
the painter of love, never loved a Dido, and that Rousseau, the model
citizen, had enough pride to had furnished forth an aristocracy.
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