Rome, his Florence, his whole glowing Italy, within
the four walls of his library. He has in his books the ruins of an antique
world, - and the glories of a modern one, - his Apollo and Transfiguration. He
must neither forget nor undervalue his vocation, but thank God that he is a
poet; and everywhere be true to himself, and to the vision and the faculty
divine he recognizes within him.«
    »But, at any rate, a town life is most eventful,« continued the Baron. »The
men who make, or take, the lives of poets and scholars, always complain that
these lives are barren of incidents. Hardly a literary biography begins without
some such apology, unwisely made. I confess, however, that it is not made
without some show of truth, if by incidents we mean only those startling events
which suddenly turn aside the stream of time, and change the world's history in
an hour. There is certainly a uniformity, pleasing or unpleasing, in literary
life, which for the most part makes to-day seem twin-born with yesterday. But if
by incidents you mean events in the history of the human mind, (and why not?)
noiseless events, that do not scar the forehead of the world as battles do, yet
change it not the less, then surely the lives of literary men are most eventful.
The complaint and the apology are both foolish. I do not see why a successful
book is not as great an event as a successful campaign; only different in kind,
and not easily compared.«
    »Indeed,« interrupted Flemming, »in no sense is the complaint strictly true,
though at times apparently so. Events enough there are, were they all set down.
A life that is worth writing at all is worth writing minutely. Besides, all
literary men have not lived in silence and solitude; - not all in stillness, not
all in shadow. For many have lived in troubled times, in the rude and adverse
fortunes of the state and age, and could say, with Wallenstein,
 
Our life was but a battle and a march;
And, like the wind's blast, never resting, homeless,
We stormed across the war-convulsed earth.
 
Many such examples has history recorded, - Dante, Cervantes, Byron, and others;
men of iron, - men who have dared to breast the strong breath of public opinion,
and, like spectre-ships, come sailing right against the wind. Others have been
puffed out by the first adverse