Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 83.djvu/66

62 and he was "in full vigor when many great intellects have passed into their decline."

Balzac "was eminently sound and healthy," "his whole person breathed intense vitality," yet those who were in the secret of his life asked with pitiful wonder how any man could find the time and physical endurance sufficient to support the enormous work of his "La Comédie Humaine."

Dumas's "health was well known and stood firm against the almost wanton test he imposed upon it." Such abuse plus the writing of "1,200 volumes" did not seem to impair his physical vigor until after his sixtieth year.

Thackeray was described in 1813 as "a stout, healthful, broad-shouldered specimen of a man." He knew no such thing as taking care of himself and suffered the consequences, though it took time to undo him. Edward Fitzgerald tells us how he wrote "reviews and newspapers all the morning; dining, drinking and talking of a night, managing to preserve a fresh color and perpetual flow of spirits under a wear and tear of thinking and feeding that would have knocked up all the other men I know two years ago at the least." Thackeray had the best medical advice, but, as he said, "What is the use of advice if you don't follow it? They tell me not to drink and I do drink. They tell me not to eat and I do eat. In short, I do everything I am not to do, and, therefore, what is to be expected? "Thackeray has the unenviable distinction of being one of the comparatively few men of genius who have undervalued health. He preferred, as he acknowledged in his exaggerated style, to "reel from dinner party to dinner party, to wallow in turtle, and to swim in claret and champagne." It is little wonder that the time came and came early (at fifty-one) when "he could not work at will"; when upon taking up his pen "his number of the magazine would not come."

In Dickens we have a man of superlative energy. After writing until twelve "he came out ready for a long walk. . . twelve, fifteen, even twenty miles a day were none too much for Dickens. . . swinging his blackthorn stick, his little figure sprang forward over the ground, and it took a practiced pair of legs to keep alongside of his voice.'* Dickens himself relates "a special feat of turning out of bed at two, after a hard day, pedestrian and otherwise, and walking thirty miles into the country for breakfast."

He was temperate in meats and drinks. James Fields said he had "rarely seen a man eat and drink less," but he was not temperate in his outlay of energy. As his self-chosen biographer said, "He never thought of husbanding his strength except to make fresh demands upon it," and besides, "his notion of finding rest from mental exertion