"
Schiller produced his greatest tragedies in the midst of physical
suffering almost amounting to torture. Handel was never greater
than when, warned by palsy of the approach of death, and
struggling with distress and suffering, he sat down to compose the
great works which have made his name immortal in music. Mozart
composed his great operas, and last of all his 'Requiem,' when
oppressed by debt, and struggling with a fatal disease. Beethoven
produced his greatest works amidst gloomy sorrow, when oppressed
by almost total deafness. And poor Schubert, after his short but
brilliant life, laid it down at the early age of thirty-two;
his sole property at his death consisting of his manuscripts,
the clothes he wore, and sixty-three florins in money. Some of
Lamb's finest writings were produced amidst deep sorrow, and
Hood's apparent gaiety often sprang from a suffering heart.
As he himself wrote,
"There's not a string attuned to mirth,
But has its chord in melancholy."
Again, in science, we have the noble instance of the suffering
Wollaston, even in the last stages of the mortal disease which
afflicted him, devoting his numbered hours to putting on record,
by dictation, the various discoveries and improvements he had
made, so that any knowledge he had acquired, calculated to benefit
his fellow-creatures, might not be lost.
Afflictions often prove but blessings in disguise.
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