CONCEIT OF GENIUS.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20266, 28 March 1934, Page 15

CONCEIT OF GENIUS.

Arts and Philosophy. Early writers often crowed lustily over their performances, a* did Horace when he wrote: “I have reared a monument more enduring than braes, and loftier than the Pyramids’ royal etruc tures.” Dante constantly epoke of himself as sure of immortality. Milton was convinced that he wrote for future generations. Ben Jonson’s arrogance and conceit were euch that Leigh Hunt wrote a long essay on hie “preposterous self-love.” In art, Hogarth freely boasted his equality with the old mast era. It being said at dinner, as illustrating a certain person's discrimination, that he had declared Hogarth to be as good a portrait painter as Vandyck. Hogarth is reported to have said: “And so 3 am; give me but my time, and let me choose my subject.” Though he never sold a single picture to a stranger till after painting fifteen years, Constable was able to write: “I feel move than ever a decided conviction that I shall make good pictures—pictures valuablo to posterity, if I do not reap the benefit.” To prove that superiority of which he was certain, Turner wished two of Claude’s pictures to be hung beside his own in the National Gallery. Greuze was very rain, and Diderot, in noting the fact, ventures the opinion that had he been less so he could not have painted so excellently. Musicians generally accept adoration as if it were their due. Even philosophers may be conceited. Schopenhauer left a manuscript book entitled “On Oneself,” full of the most haughty and arrogant expressions. He ends a short treatise on the history of philosophy v | h a special chapter on the merits of liis own system. After detailing some of Sts excellencies, he continues: “Not, of course, w-hile I am living, hut in time, people will come to recognise that, in comparison witli mine, the treatment of those dealing with the same subjects as myself is flat. By me, on these accounts, lias humanity been apprised of sundry matters it will never forget, and my writings will not pass away.**