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On the frame of his portrait, Mr. Beauclerk had inscribed, Ingenium ingens Inculto latet hoc sub corpore . After Mr. Beauclerk's death, when it became Mr. Langton's property, he made the inscription be defaced. Johnson said complacently, 'It was kind in you to take it off; and then after a short pause, added, 'and not unkind in him to put it on.
I believe he finds himself tolerably happy in the clay cottage to which he is a tenant for life, because he has learned to keep it in pretty good order; while the share of health and animal spirits which Heaven has given him shall hold out, I can scarcely imagine he will be one moment peevish about the outside of so precarious, so temporary a habitation, or will ever be brought to own 'Ingenium Galbae male habitat: 'Monsieur est mal logé." Good-humored at the time, his good-humor persevered, and in later life he was wont to say jestingly that he found he was growing more and more like his famous portrait every day.
A conformity and flexibility of manners is necessary in the course of the world; that is, with regard to all things which are not wrong in themselves. The 'versatile ingenium' is the most useful of all. It can turn itself instantly from one object to another, assuming the proper manner for each. It can be serious with the grave, cheerful with the gay, and trifling with the frivolous.
Beside that ingenium perfervidum of the Scottish seer, he was but a Pall-Mall Jeremiah after all.
Dante, among modern poets, his only rival in condensed force, says: "Optimis conceptionibus optima loquela conveniet; sed optimae conceptiones non possunt esse nisi ubi scientia et ingenium est; ... et sic non omnibus versificantibus optima loquela convenit, cum plerique sine scientia et ingenio versificantur."
Cardan does not seem to have harboured animosity against Scaliger. In the De Vita Propria, ch. xlviii. p. 198, he writes: "Julius Cæsar Scaliger plures mihi titulos ascribit, quam ego mihi concedi postulassem, appellans ingenium profundissimum, felicissimum, et incomparabile." "Quid tua interest quod quatuor verba adjecerim? an hoc tantum crimen est! quid facerem absens absenti?"
Ingratam expertus patriam venerandus uterque est: Felix mutato erit uterque solo. Ep. Grot. 401. p. 868. Gallia magnanimis dedit exorata Batavis Dîs geniti æternum Scaligeri ingenium: Fallor an humanis male dura Batavia Gallis Scaligerum magno reddidit in Grotio. Buchner. Vind. Grot. p. 237.
It was, perhaps, the contrast between the body and the mind, between the incultum corpus, and the ingenium, which afterwards was one cause of his being received so willingly in those circles of what is called high life, where any thing that is exceedingly strange and unusual is apt to carry its own recommendation with it.
But Florus, Tacitus, Pliny the elder, and Curtius, are deeply imbued with his manner and style. Quintilian, though anxiously eschewing all imitation of him, continually falls into it; there was a charm about those short, incisive sentences which none who had read them could resist; as Tacitus well says, there was in him ingenium amoenum et temporis eius auribus accommodatum.
Athens was the most famous university in her days; and her senators, that is to say, the Areopagites, were all philosophers. Lacedaemon, to speak truth, though she could write and read, was not very bookish. For Rome, she had ingenium par ingenio, was as learned as great, and held our College of Augurs in much reverence. Venice has taken her religion upon trust.
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