Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 February 1892 — The Temperament of Genius. [ARTICLE]

The Temperament of Genius.

An eminent litterateur, who like other journalists seems in the season of the big gooseberry—the season, too, described by a leading publisher as the dullest on record—to suffer from lack of matter for his monthly gossip, has raised, apropos of Mrs. Ireland’s new book, the old question of the celibacy of writing men. He says to the matrimonially minded virgin, “Don’t marry a man of genius.” So and on much the same grounds has the author of “Virginibus Puerisque” spoken. To quote him, “The pract ce of letters is miserably harassing to the mind, and after an hour or two’s work all the more human portion of the author is extinct; he will bully, backbite, and speak daggers ” But the doctors ditier. A day or two ago I was talking to one of the most eminent and also one of the busiest of oui literary men. I asked him what portions of life he thought most enjoyable. “Those in which I am hard at work,* ho answeiod, without a moment’s hesitation. “And does ft not make you nervous and irritable?” was my next query. “Not at all,” he replied; “on the contrary, a spell of composition exhilarates me like the drinking of champagne. I never feel depressed or gloomy except when idle. ” One fancies Sir Walter Scott did not make a bad husband, and he worked about as hard as most men. Depend upon it, the marriage of a literary man is as much of a lottery as any other wedding.—London Globe.