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There we find how many controversies, in which the public get involved, have sprung from some sudden squabbles, some neglect of petty civility, some unlucky epithet, or some casual observation dropped without much consideration, which mortified or enraged the genus irritabile; a title which from ancient days has been assigned to every description of authors. The late Dr.
They would scarcely, I think, deny their belief, not only that the genus irritabile would be found to include many other species besides that of bards; but that the irritability of trade would soon reduce the resentments of poets into mere shadow-fights in the comparison. Or is wealth the only rational object of human interest? Or even if this were admitted, has the poet no property in his works?
I have often thought, that it would be neither uninstructive nor unamusing to analyze, and bring forward into distinct consciousness, that complex feeling, with which readers in general take part against the author, in favour of the critic; and the readiness with which they apply to all poets the old sarcasm of Horace upon the scribblers of his time genus irritabile vatum.
The same friend tells how well he took a rather fierce attack on an unpublished piece, when Mr Palgrave "owned that he could not find one good line in it." Perhaps most of the genus irritabile will grant that spoken criticism, if unfavourable, somehow annoys and stirs opposition in an author; probably because it confirms his own suspicions about his work. Such criticism is almost invariably just.
"Since my king and patron have thought fit To place me on the throne of modern wit, " he proceeds to read the subject throng a saucy lecture on their vices and follies, "As bishops to their clergy give their charge." A good-natured dogmatism is the tone of the whole; but presumption and dogmatism find no charity among the genus irritabile, and Whitehead received no quarter.
Heine had his full share of love of fame, and cared quite as much as his brethren of the genus irritabile whether people praised his verses or blamed them. And he was very little of a hero. Posterity will certainly decorate his tomb with the emblem of the laurel rather than with the emblem of the sword.
“Your father,” writes Jowett, with his usual wisdom, to Lord Tennyson, “was very sensitive, and had an honest hatred of being gossiped about. It never occurred to him that a new poet in the days of his youth was sure to provoke dangerous hostilities in the ‘genus irritabile vatum’ and in the old-fashioned public.”
Again, the poets have always been the "genus irritabile" the irritable tribe. They not only see deeply, but feel acutely. Often they are too highly sensitized for their own happiness. If they receive a pleasure more exquisite than ours from a flower, a glimpse of the sea, a gracious action, they are correspondingly quick to feel dissonances, imperfections, slights.
Cooks have ever been a genus irritabile; authors still more so: Malebranche was both: a dispute arose; the old father, warm already, became warmer; culinary and metaphysical irritations united to derange his liver: he took to his bed, and died. Such is the common version of the story: "So the whole ear of Denmark is abused."
And let it be remembered, as an admonition to the genus irritabile of dramatick writers, that this great man, instead of peevishly complaining of the bad taste of the town, submitted to its decision without a murmur.
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