"too effeminate and timid, and too much troubled with delicate nerves. The
_greatest poets_ of all countries," he continues, "have been men eminently
endowed with _bodily powers_, and rejoiced and excelled in all _manly
exercises_." May not our critic of northern habits have often mistaken
the art of the great poets in _describing_ such "manly exercises or bodily
powers," for the proof of their "rejoicing and excelling in them?" Poets
and artists, from their habits, are not usually muscular and robust.[A]
Continuity of thought, absorbing reverie, and sedentary habits, will not
combine with corporeal skill and activity. There is also a constitutional
delicacy which is too often the accompaniment of a fine intellect.
The inconveniences attached to the inferior sedentary labourers are
participated in by men of genius; the analogy is obvious, and their fate
is common. Literary men may be included in Ramazzini's "Treatise on the
Diseases of Artizans." ROSSEAU has described the labours of the closet as
enervating men, and weakening the constitution, while study wears the
whole machinery of man, exhausts the spirits, destroys his strength, and
renders him pusillanimous.[B] But there is a higher principle which guides
us to declare, that men of genius should not _excel_ in "all manly
exercises." SENECA, whose habits were completely literary, admonishes the
man of letters that "Whatever amusement he chooses, he should not slowly
return from those of the body to the mind, while he should be exercising
the latter night and day." Seneca was aware that "to rejoice and excel in
all manly exercises," would in some cases intrude into the habits of a
literary man, and sometimes be even ridiculous. MORTIMER, once a
celebrated artist, was tempted by his athletic frame to indulge in
frequent violent exercises; and it is not without reason suspected, that
habits so unfavourable to thought and study precluded that promising
genius from attaining to the maturity of his talents, however he might
have succeeded in invigorating his physical powers.